- From: olivier Thereaux <ot@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 11:00:46 +0900
- To: www-validator Community <www-validator@w3.org>
- Cc: Alastair McKenzie <alastairmckenzie@blueyonder.co.uk>
Dear all, Feedback from Alastair a week or two ago have prompted action on an older usability enhancement idea. In a way similar to how the results of the validation of an online document include a form to validate the document again (allowing a recursive process of fixing and checking), the idea was to provide a similar mechanism for direct input and file upload. For direct input, Brett created a patch that just works, and we'll have it included in the upcoming release of the validator: the validation results include a textarea pre-filled with the source code checked (along with modifications such as doctype override, etc), and one can edit this source and check it again. That's great. This can be tested, as usual, on the dev instance over at: http://qa-dev.w3.org/wmvs/HEAD/ For the file upload mode, there is no perfect solution, because, for security reasons, a browser will never, ever pre-populate a file selection box. This leaves us with two choices: 1) the validation results include an empty file selection box, with instructions telling the user that the file has to be added again. This is still better usability-wise than having to return to the home page and fill in the options again, but it is not hard to imagine people complaining that the validator is broken, why does't it pre- fill the box, etc, etc. 2) the validation results include a textarea pre-filled with the source of the uploaded file, just like in the direct input mode. This allows for easy modification and re-validation of the content, but the shift in mode (upload -> direct) is plagued with technical issues (no media type, hence, different XML detection modes; charset in direct input is always utf-8...) which would, in some case, cause revalidation to give seemingly incoherent results. I think the potential for confusion in 2) is too big to use the idea as is, so I guess 1) is the way to go. If anyone has an idea, or thoughts on how to make this work, they would be much welcome. Thank you, -- olivier
Received on Thursday, 13 September 2007 02:00:50 UTC