Re: Complex Table Examples

On Mon, 14 May 2007, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
> > 
> > A recent study I'm aware of that looked at actual use of the "summary" 
> > attribute, for example, suggests that "summary" is almost universally 
> > abused:
> > 
> >    http://canvex.lazyilluminati.com/misc/summary.html
> 
> And that is representative enough?

Not really. But it's infinitely better than nothing.


> > The same kind of study for headers="" would be useful. In particular, 
> > it would be extremely useful to see if, in a sample of several 
> > thousand or million pages,
> 
> Ok, hands up: who here has the time to mount a research project of this 
> magnitude?

Me. I've been doing research of this nature for most things in the spec so 
far (though usually with samples of billions of pages, not millions).


> To defend *keeping* something in the spec that works *today*

It isn't a given that it works today.


> and reportedly is the best solution with current levels of AT as per 
> http://www.usability.com.au/resources/tables.cfm?

That page doesn't say it's the best solution. It mentions it as one 
solution (without really even saying what the problem is).


> If that is the rigour of evidence required, I demand to see it for 
> *every* single element/attribute that differs between HTML 4.1 and 5.

That's pretty much what I've been doing, for old elements as well as new 
elements (e.g. most elements added have been added based on research 
showing that authors are working around their absense by using classes 
-- <footer> being the canonical example; class=footer is the most common 
class name according to my studies).

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 14 May 2007 23:13:57 UTC