Re: Auxiliary document data, pop-ups and range links

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At 05:50 AM 12/07/97 PDT, Ishida,Richard wrote:
>Proposals for:	access to ?auxiliary document data?
>		provision of ?pop-up display boxes?
>		the ability to specify ranges of HTML text for includes, 
>			auxiliary document data, etc.
[snip]
>EXAMPLES OF INTENDED USE:
>
>1	I am reading a document about translation technology.  I come across 
> the term ?source matching? which is highlighted (let us say by a 
> dashed underline, but that is user definable).  I click on the 
> highlighted term and a small box pops up on top of the document I?m 
> reading containing a definition of the term.  The definition could 
> contain just a single sentence of text, or may contain several 
> paragraphs with embedded objects or images - ie. a mini HTML page).  I 
> click on the box or hit carriage return, the pop-up disappears and I 
> continue reading.  This has significant benefits over loading a 
> complete new page in that I can maintain my visual context in the 
> original document.  Because I had told my user agent to preload the 
> auxiliary data into the cache, it would also make it much faster than 
> loading an additional page.

This can already be done with a plain old HTML 2.0 definition list, with 
"source matching" as the definition term (DT) and the actual definition as 
the DD.  Browsers are free to treat it as you have described above.  
Perhaps what you're looking for is a method in style sheets (where this 
sort of presentational feature belongs) to suggest that DDs are initially 
hidden but are shown as pop-ups when desired.  You might want to take 
ideas like this to www-style@w3.org.

>SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF THE POPUP
>
>12	A POPUP element would need to provide access to the ?auxiliary data? 
> which will be displayed, and enclose a stretch of HTML which serves as 
> the prompt.

POPUP is too visual.  You would have to abstract it to something more 
general, such as AUXIL.

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Liam Quinn
===============  http://www.htmlhelp.com/%7Eliam/  ===============
Web Design Group            Enhanced Designs, Web Site Development
http://www.htmlhelp.com/    http://enhanced-designs.com/
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Received on Saturday, 12 July 1997 12:20:53 UTC