RE: nesting and the newly promiscuous href

Chris Mannall wrote:

> Not true. From a quick cursory glance, the XHTML 2.0 
> draft doesn't specify the behaviour of nested links 

Which means that different agents will implement it
differently, and authors will be surprised.

> [Suggests opening the outer one when it is the only choice,
>   and either the inner one or both when selecting the inner.]

I agree that these probably make more sense than just blotting
out out completely, but they are still a user interface nightmare.  

Opening both recreates the unstoppable-stream-of-popups issue.  

Opening only the inner one will do surprising things when 
the border between the two areas isn't perfectly clear (or the 
mouse resolution isn't good).  Today, missing an anchor does 
no harm, and the mouse and be moved for anther try.  With 
this solution ... missing an anchor gets you to the wrong 
location.  Some browsers will start adding anonymous blank 
boxes in between - others won't.  It also makes it harder to
unfocus, as there is no guaranteed "safe" location in any page.

So yes, there are "obvious" resolutions, but they aren't good,
and they won't be consistent across user interfaces; nested 
links is asking for trouble.  (The exception would be an
element with links of more than one type, such as src and
href.  Even this is awkward, but it can be more easily
standardized.)

-jJ

Received on Monday, 8 December 2003 11:50:55 UTC