Re: Mailing list archives: feeback requested on proposed improvements (1: list)

Comments (part 1) on:
http://www.w3.org/2002/03/archives-improvements/ml-index

The page I experimented with is at
http://www.cwi.nl/~steven/w3c/lists/ml-index.html
(It still needs work)
====
I realise that the [Shortcut] link is for accessibility reasons, but it
confused me for a while. It is really not useful for the sighted reader, and
will confuse a lot of people, I am sure.

Is there no way we can hide it in the markup, so that accessible user agents
see it, and no one else has to be confronted with it?

Does an empty <a> with a title work? <a href="#latest" accesskey="j"
title="Latest message"></a>.
====
I'm a big believer in maximising the content and minimising the wasted
space. How about moving the icon into the <h1> (and making the h1
class="head")? The icon positioning would need to be adjusted, but it gives
at least three more lines of real content.
====
Visually I don't think the <hr/> is needed at the top. The search box and
the following headings already break it up visually.
====
Visually I feel the table needs to be indented a little
====
I think "re-sorted" should just be "sorted"
====
Move the "by" into the header, so it reads "sorted by", and then the columns
are just thread, author, and subject.
====
Move the <em> from the <th>s into the stylesheet.
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The 'title's of the links are inconsistent. I would make them "March 2002 by
date", "March 2002 by thread", "March 2002 by author", "March 2002 by
subject".
====
There are empty rows between the December and the January rows of the
tables. Apparently this is to signal a change of year, but visually this is
very subtle, and I'm guessing it's not that useful from an accessibility
point of view either. How about having a <tbody> for each year with a
suitable title:

    <tbody title="2002">...
    </tbody>
    <tbody title="2001">...
    </tbody>

this handles the accessibility. Now the visual. Hmm neither Opera nor
Netscape 6 seem to do margins or borders on <tbody>. That still needs work.
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There should be no <br/> after the <address> tag at the bottom.
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I'm not sure of the value of the extra help link at the bottom (it is
already at the top). I'm guessing that it would be more useful if the
accesskey was on the top link, not the bottom one. Is there a reason that
the accesskey for help is a capital H, and all the other ones lower-case?
====
Steven

Received on Wednesday, 27 March 2002 07:58:25 UTC