Re: [css3-gcpm] paged presentations, page floats, paged navigation between documents

On 11 October 2011 00:10, Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com> wrote:

> The @navigation rule is used to position other documents around the
> current document. This way, user gestures can be used to navigate to
> the. As such, the "point-and-click" metaphor of the web is extended
> with "navigate-through-gestures". E.g.:
>
>  <link rel=index href="...">
>  <link rel=next href="...">
>
>  @-o-navigation {
>    nav-up: -o-link-rel(index);
>    nav-right: -o-link-rel(next);
>  }

I haven't seen anyone else comment on this section, but I think your
@navigation block is not necessary, as it just adds an extra layer of
abstraction/indirection. What you are trying to do appears to be to
allow web developers to control the mapping between a UA-provided
semantic navigation event, and a HTML-specified spacial relation
between resources, implicitly implying that navigation to that
resource is to occur in response to the event. I think such a mapping
should be defined by the user agent itself, or allow the user to set
the corresponding relation (from the set of HTML rel attribute values)
for each gesture available (with co-ordinated defaults). In this way,
it will be consistant between websites, and can be brought to market
in a much shorter timescale, without every website having to be
updated to add the new CSS you're defining. In addition, it will work
with the millions of sites (mostly blogs) that already have link
elements.
e.g. swiping down always goes to the previous chapter/month/tag, and
down-then-right is used for the contents; rather than say down going
to the toc on one site, front page on another, and previous chapter on
a third.

I could see it being abused though, as if browser vendors instead just
agreed upon four (or however many) relations to handle for their
navigation gestures, then folks creating paginated content may instead
control the mapping of gestures by putting an inappropriate URL into
the desired relation link.

Nonetheless, I think having universal responses across sites and UAs
is a better upside than potential abuse of @rel values it would create
(which is of course possible anyway). There would also be no chance of
people creating their own rel values and mapping navigation gestures
to those, which would of be inaccessible or hidden in a submenu to
people using a standard site navigation toolbar in a desktop browser.

-- 
Nicholas.

Received on Saturday, 15 October 2011 12:47:11 UTC