RE: Work that would be required to revert Internet Explorer 8 to 'aria:'

Chris, I think this is going to be a problem in that a lot of people are
using IE7 and CSS attribute selectors will not work with a ":"


Rich Schwerdtfeger
Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist
Chair, IBM Accessibility Architecture Review  Board
blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/schwer


                                                                           
             Chris Wilson                                                  
             <Chris.Wilson@mic                                             
             rosoft.com>                                                To 
             Sent by:                  Al Gilman                           
             w3c-wai-pf-reques         <Alfred.S.Gilman@IEEE.org>          
             t@w3.org                                                   cc 
                                       List WAI PF <w3c-wai-pf@w3.org>,    
                                       Marc Silbey                         
             05/22/2008 03:51          <marcsil@windows.microsoft.com>,    
             PM                        "www-tag@w3.org" <www-tag@w3.org>   
                                                                   Subject 
                                       RE: Work that would be required to  
                                       revert Internet Explorer 8 to       
                                       'aria:'                             
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           





Al Gilman [mailto:Alfred.S.Gilman@IEEE.org] asked:

>I don't know who could speak for Microsoft on such a question -- who
>holds product authority.  Normally I would work through Marc Silbey
>to find the right person in Microsoft, but he is incommunicado
>through the end of the month and so I am approaching you.

Fair enough.

>[the TAG] are asking for a realistic statement on the ease/likelihood
>of such a change; we of PFWG would appreciate it if the answer adds a
>schedule dimension.  Rough estimate of calendar time elapsed before a
>colon-using release of FireFox [presumably you meant to say IE here]

The change is somewhat significant in terms of code to make ARIA as useful
as it is now (e.g. for attribute selectors to work seamlessly with
namespaces).  I expect if this change were make in the spec, it would be
unlikely to make the IE8 release.  Of course, we do want to be
interoperable, so if the specification were to change, we would want to
make the change in our code as soon as possible.

In addition, though I'm more open to XML extensibility as the right way to
go for the web, I think as Charles detailed in depth it's probably really
confusing the issue.  I expect we're not "putting a colon in an attribute,"
we're inserting namespaces into HTML - which although I personally think
would be a good thing, I think for the case of disambiguating ARIA
properties, which we want to be used everywhere, it is not the right thing.

>Is it possible for someone to speak on behalf of Microsoft in
>response to the question from the TAG?   Could you be the person?

Yes and yes.  I'm happy to discuss further with the TAG if desired.

-Chris