Re: direct link to latest version of S. Pieters' ARIA Proposal

Doug/Anthony,

A couple of quick points (inline):

> [snip]
>
> Right, the 'role' attribute can be used to simply provide some semantics
> without any behavior, so you could label something as related to
> navigation, or as a banner ad, or pretty much any other categorization
> that people find useful.  The 'class' attribute could also be used this
> way, but that's more controversial, since some people think that CSS
> should only be used for styling, and that attaching semantics to it adds
> content.

The problem with @class is that it is intentionally designed to say
nothing that is 'global' That means that you are quite entitled to
have @class="navbar", as am I, and HTML pretty much guarantees that
there will be no problem arising. That's not the same as @rel, which
was defined to have a specific list of values.

So to use @class to say "menu" or "navbar" would be unwise, since
you'd be trying to create a global definition for something that is
specifically engineered *not* to allow global definitions. (That
hasn't stopped people from trying to co-opt @class in this way.)

By the way, in the early drafts of @role, the original creators (T. V.
Raman and Steven Pemberton), specifically said that a new attribute
was needed because @class could not be used in this way.


[snip]

> No, I think you just caught a different boat, but it's also traveling in
> a useful direction.  It's good to have people thinking in different
> directions.  That 'role' can be useful to offscreen uses (not just
> print, but pre- or post-processing, and for a variety of tasks with
> XSLT) reinforces that it is is useful to add.

Definitely...I remember presenting on @role at a W3C mobile workshop a
few years ago, and the immediate use-case that people were thinking of
was that a server would be able to reorganise a page for a mobile
device, once it knew which parts of the page served what purpose.

Regards,

Mark

-- 
  Mark Birbeck, formsPlayer

  mark.birbeck@formsPlayer.com | +44 (0) 20 7689 9232
  http://www.formsPlayer.com | http://internet-apps.blogspot.com

  standards. innovation.

Received on Friday, 5 October 2007 15:07:26 UTC