Re: [XHTML 2] removal of navigation list element

"Anne van Kesteren" <fora@annevankesteren.nl> wrote in message 
news:429B46AE.2020700@annevankesteren.nl...
>> As I understood from Pemberton's XTech 2005 lecture, the role attribute 
>> was invented for that reason; to be able to add semantics to the document 
>> which do not warrant their own element.
>
> Although I heard he's a great speaker, the specification matters, not what 
> people say about it.

Especially as the slides of the talk include some things which don't agree 
with the specification such as "The use of content still permitted if you 
want:"  so I'd guess it was actually based on XHTML 2 drafts that aren't the 
actual current one.

>> Given your example, why have an <nl> element there? The list is in the 
>> navigation section of the document, why say again that it is for 
>> navigation?
>
> Because I could also have a normal list in there summing up some 
> advantages of navigation.

One of problems I have with nl, is that you cannot have an ordered 
navigation, which the role="navigation" method does give us.

>> The fact that the list items themselves are hyperlinks can be derived by 
>> their href="" attributes. Similarly, if a definition list were used for 
>> navigation, e.g.
>
> Please tell me where this is specified that UAs should implement this in 
> such a way.

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-hyperAttributes.html#adef_hyperAttributes_href

Is the closest you can get, and for the XHTML 2 specification, I think it's 
actually one of the better defined pieces, of course, I'm not surprised you 
missed it, it's hardly clear, still this is only an early draft full of 
holes, I'm sure it can be brushed up into a decent state before it 
approaches CR.

> I think this is incorrect usage of the DL element that has existed for 
> some time now on the web. Apparently XHTML 2 didn't redefine DL to be a 
> more generic element so I'd consider this particular example to be non 
> conforming.

Unfortunately Conformance in XHTML 2.0 is only defined in the structure, 
there is no conformance that I can find for what you actually put in your 
mark-up, so it could not be called non-conforming...

Of course, I'm sure the WG will get along to specifying that as the spec 
actually starts to approach maturity.

Cheers,

Jim.

Received on Monday, 30 May 2005 17:32:43 UTC