Re: Some comments on the user agent guidelines

Ian,
Thanks for your response.  You're right that the resume of aborted downloads is a usability not 
accessibility feature.  I think the downloading of linked pages is accessibility related because it 
enables one to read web pages with whatever viewing program is most accessible and 
efficient for the user, which often is not the web browser itself.  I did not mean a recursive 
download of linked pages, just downloading those linked to the currently loaded web page.

Regards,
Jamal
	On Sun, 05 Dec 1999 13:32:08 -0500, Ian Jacobs wrote:

>Jamal Mazrui wrote:
>> 
>> The following is my input on the "last call" working draft of the
>> W3C's user agent accessibility guidelines:
>
>Hi Jamal,
>
>Thank you for the suggested techniques. Some comments below:
>
>> *    When applicable (such as with a computer based browser),
>> provide a mechanism for downloading a batch of links to the
>> current page.  It is common for a user to want several linked
>> pages downloaded, yet most browsers today require that each link
>> be visited and separately downloaded.  An example would be a
>> dialog that includes a listbox of file extensions representing
>> files linked to the current web page.  The user could select one,
>> multiple, or all of the extensions to be downloaded in an
>> automated process.  The file names would be the same or closest
>> equivalents on the user's computer in a directory/folder that
>> could be chosen in another control of the dialog.  An enhanced
>> option would place all downloaded files in a compressed archive
>> using an industry standard format (such as the public domain .zip
>> one).
>
>For which checkpoint is this a technique? How exactly would this
>work?
>
>1) If you say "Download the current page and everything it links
>to recursively" you may get the whole Web on your hard drive...
>You might do the following:
>
>1) Download the current page and any linked to it via LINK
>2) Download all referenced images, objects, etc. (What about
>   applets?)
>3) Don't download resources linked by  <A href..>
>
>2) If you spend time identifying each page you want to download
>   and putting the URL in a list box, doesn't that amount
>   to following the link as we do today?
> 
>> *    Support the resumption of partial downloads so that a time
>> consuming but incomplete download is continued rather than
>> restarted.
>
>While extremely important, this feature does not seem to be 
>an accessibility issue and my gut feeling is that it's out
>of scope for this document.
>
>I realize that anything that saves time can benefit accessibility.
>Can you suggest important reasons while resumption of a download
>benefits accessibility?
>
>Thanks Jamal!
>
> - Ian
>
>-- 
>Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
>Tel/Fax:                     +1 212 684-1814
>Cell:                        +1 917 450-8783

Received on Thursday, 9 December 1999 22:27:12 UTC