Re: ISSUE 30 @longdesc use cases

On Mon, 23 Aug 2010, James Craig wrote:
>
> It's common practice in web applications to show information at the time 
> it's requested. What if the author wants to show the linked content only 
> once the link is clicked? Wouldn't this requirement disallow that 
> pattern?

Yes, but that pattern is addressed by <details>, not hidden="". The spec 
is explicit about hidden="" not being for that use case (it even gives an 
example of a case such as you describe -- a tab panel widget -- and 
describes why it isn't an appropriate use of hidden="").


On Mon, 23 Aug 2010, Jonas Sicking wrote:
>
> You still haven't answered the question what problem is solved by 
> defining @hidden this way.

I didn't realise you were asking for the reason behind the actual 
definition of hidden="" as being "irrelevant data", I thought you were 
asking why we would disallow links to irrelevant data as a conformance 
requirement.

hidden="" is defined as flagging irrelevant data because there previously 
was no way to do this, but it is common practice to have content in Web 
pages that is not relevant. For example, a Web app might have a login page 
and an application page as distinct <section>s of the same HTML file. 
There was no way, prior to hidden="", to initially hide the application 
page (which is useless until the user is logged in). Authors used 
display:none to fake this, but that has poor accessibility results; for 
example, it means any user agent without CSS support would see the content 
that was intended to be hidden.

HTH,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Tuesday, 24 August 2010 00:31:37 UTC