Re: Control Text-file Embedding in HTML-docs

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:20:11 +0200, Jacques Steyn  
<Jacques.Steyn@infotech.monash.edu> wrote:

> Form this perspective it is essential that document fragments be  
> identifiable, and easily be replaceable, ideally by using markup which  
> identifies this, and browsers doing the work of fetching relevent  
> fragments and putting final documents together. This is simple to do --  
> why leave it for scripting languages?

I can see the need for a simpler inclusion mechanism that doesn't rely on  
<iframe> or <object> and at the same time allows for inline content that  
can be rendered if the UA does not support the given elements. Today, the  
most popular method to solve this issue is with Ajax and <iframe>.

While <iframe> works, it has some nasty effects on the presentation of the  
included content, where local CSS won't apply, the height of the <iframe>  
needs to be known and set before the inclusion is done and so on. Ajax, on  
the other hand, requires some pretty hard-core scripting knowledge and  
blocks out UA's that don't handle scripts.

While I, from an accessibility standpoint, prefer having all content  
inline, I can see the need for inclusion in a more style- and  
accessibility friendly way than what <iframe> and Ajax offers today. I  
believe it is within the scope of this WG to address this.

The solution might even be to re-use <iframe> with new specification  
language or CSS properties to support the styling needs authors may have,  
but I don't know. What's important is that this is put up on an agenda to  
be discussed so we may work out a solution that isn't as quirky as  
<iframe> and not as exclusive and accessibility-hostile as Ajax.

At the same time, we should address the need to include content that  
persists across pages and navigation, without the need to use frames. I  
know Ian Hickson has written about this on his weblog, but I can't find it  
at the moment. The idea is that you open up a socket to the UA on one  
page, and then the UA persist this socket across several different pages  
without breaking the connection. With such a mechanism, one can include  
video, audio and other types of streaming and non-linear content to pages  
that can still be navigated without stopping or breaking the audio/video  
stream.

-- 
Asbjørn Ulsberg     -=|=-    http://virtuelvis.com/quark/
«He's a loathsome offensive brute, yet I can't look away»

Received on Saturday, 31 March 2007 23:58:53 UTC