Re: accesskey

On Mon, 27 Dec 1999, Murray Altheim wrote, in part:
> > So it would seem from the Spec ("Pressing an access key assigned to an
> > element gives focus to the element."[3]), but I see no reason that that
> > should be so. Why shouldn't a <link>, even if not displayed, have an
> > accesskey?
> 
> You allude to the problem. Noting that <link> may be used for various 
> features, some of which have no user interaction at all, what exactly
> would the accesskey being pressed *do*? If it's not intuitive it's 
> unlikely that we'd want to suggest it.
> 
> Unless there is an intuitive association between a link element and
> an intended behaviour, adding an accesskey is going to introduce more
> problems than it solves. And one must note that there are many kinds
> of links;, not all involve user interaction.

Every <link> tag has an href attribute. (It's implied, yes, but, still,
every <link> tag has an href attribute.) It would seem intuitive to use
accesskey as thought the <link> tag were an <a> tag, no? That would be
useful for every link type listed in
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/types.html#h-6.12 except Stylesheet. Fourteen
out of fifteen ain't bad, eh?

The only other thing I can envision using <link> for (which is already in
the Spec) is as an alternative to <head profile="foo">. For that, too,
hyperlinking to it would not make much sense, somake it 14 out of 16.  :-)

Michael Hamm
BA, Math, Sept. '00
msh210@nyu.edu
http://www.crosswinds.net/~msh210/

Received on Monday, 27 December 1999 14:37:19 UTC