Re: Clarification needed on W3C specifications for CHECKBOX w ACCESSKEY

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 03:39:33 +1200, Jon Gunderson <jongund@uiuc.edu> wrote:

> The accesskey portion of HTML 4 has been interpreted in
> different ways by various developers.  I think there is a
> general consensus that the HTML 4 accesskey specification was
> not very well thoughout or implemented.  XHTML 2 is right now
> trying to figure out how to fix this in new recommendations.

As an implementor, I think we don't do it very well (which puts us a long  
way ahead of the competition - the early implementations such as Internet  
Explorer and Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox are seriously broken in terms of  
usefulness).

But to answer your specific question...

> ---- Original message ----
>> From: Ed.Kautz@Metavante.com
...
>>   I am using Microsoft Internet Explorer version
>>   6.0.2800.1106 to display your test web page.
>>   The result of pressing the ALT-A keys in succession
>>   toggles the check in the box off and on.
>>
>>   Is this the result I should expect according to the
>>   W3C specifications or the way the MS IE browser
>>   interprets the W3C specifications?

This is an acceptable result according to the specification.

>>   If this result conforms to the W3C standards, why
>>   are the CHECKBOX ACCESSKEY results different from
>>   other FORM fields accessed by ACCESSKEYS?

The specification avoided explicitly requiring one or other behaviour, so  
there are many ways to conform completely to the specification and still  
make it hard for users :( In particular, sometimes doing one thing and  
sometimes another is fine :(

This is the kind of problem that the specification has. In principle the  
markup can be used to support an excellent implmentation, but the spec  
needds to be clearer on some required behaviours and so on.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile                     chaals@opera.com
   hablo español  -  je parle français  -  jeg lærer norsk
      Peek into the kitchen: http://snapshot.opera.com/

Received on Friday, 27 January 2006 23:21:03 UTC