I think this is yet another religious topic. Accessibility on most
JS menus (actually all I've seen so far) is inexistent, some of them are
so poorly done than they even throw an error on this or that browser and
the whole menu stops working. If you ask Joe Clark about his opinion...
maybe he would trash both of them :)
Personally, I think CSS menus are better (or "less bad") than JS
menus. In both cases you must know what you're doing and have
accessibility on mind (and hoy many of us do really do this?). If you
ask me, a combination of both is the best solution, which means a lot
more work than current / typical implementations --and the client's
can't see a reason to spend on that, and the guy doing the front-end has
a lot of things to think on before spending some "extra time" on the
"minor details".
I myself should be redoing part of a menu I'm planning on using, but
is for a personal site so the time I have spent on it is... a message I
sent to this list (and that Georg kindly replied), that's all. Oh,
well... real life again. In case you're curious, the link I sent was
http://dev.rsalazar.name/css.d/menu.html
By the way, the best solution for the accessibility issue I asked help
for seems to be a re-implementation of the CSS "behavioral" part
combined with a little JS to make things look better (ironic? yes, it is).
Here are some opinions, if you mind...
Kit Grose wrote:
> G'day Jay,
>
> I've heard the request for pure CSS drop-down menus quite a lot, and
> rarely see people getting told what they should about how *bad* they
> are.
>
Can you say better things on JS menus? Aren't basically the same things?
> CSS is designed as a method for styling visible items and laying them
> out relative to one-another. Drop-down menus are behavioural, and
> thus should be taken care of with Javascript (not Java; there's a
> huge difference, worth noting). Of course, accessibility means
> keeping in place a series of fall-backs which allow non-JS enabled
> users to view the list.
>
So would CSS fall-backs to do exactly the same.
It's hard (for me, at least) to agree on using JS solely on the fact
that their behavioral and, therefore, should be done with JS. It's kind
of the same as saying that changing the colors is a behavior, not a
style (which would be correct), or saying that pseudo-elements and
pseudo-classes have no reason to exist, since they're referring to a
behavior or somehow altering the DOM.
> There are some massive accessibility gains that Javascript drop-downs
> provide:
> • You can animate opening and closing lists (not just eye-candy; it
> makes it very clear to the user when there is a change on the screen)
>
Just like Flash... wouldn't really want to go more in-depth on this
(another religious topic).
> • You can provide a suitable pause before the list collapses (your
> users are not necessarily skilled with a mouse or keyboard. They may
> have difficulty operating a mouse and I can tell you from experience
> that they have real difficulty changing movement from horizontal
> (along your list headings) to vertical (down your first level list
> items) to horizontal (across the list item to the sublist) to
> vertical again (down the sublist items) without accidentally moving
> the mouse out of the bounds of the list item. Javascript menus
> introduce a delay before actions are cancelled so that a slight
> movement of the cursor outside the bounds of a list item is not
> penalised against)
>
Granted. I agree on this, the menu I mentioned before is actually a
vertical-vertical variant instead of the common horizontal-vertical
versions.
> • You can get identical behaviour in all the major browsers (all the
> CSS-only drop-down menus rely on CSS hackery to work properly in IE.
> Every sensible browser can handle the ul>li selector; the basis of a
> simple, standards-based CSS solution, but IE doesn't. CSS hackery is
> no better for you as someone who doesn't understand JS but does
> understand CSS than JS hackery; CSS hacks commonly *don't make
> sense*. They're backward thinking and complex to write).
>
Mhh... I can't see JS being more standard than CSS right now (I
guess it depends on the versions). JS has been out there more than CSS,
but it seems they're standardization isn't that far from each other.
ECMA script and DOM implementations aren't quite well supported yet, not
to mention the combination of CSS and dynamic elements.
By the way, CSS hacks make sens to those who know and understand
CSS, just like JS hacks (don't tell they don't exist, please) makes sens
to those who know and understand JS. Yet again, a religious topic.
> Please, for your users' sake: use a Javascript drop down menu (but
> make sure it's one that is fully accessible, and that reverts to a
> pure-CSS menu when JS is not available). I use TwinHelix Designs'
> excellent FreeStyle Menus (http://www.twinhelix.com/dhtml/fsmenu/)
> personally, but it's donationware for commercial use.
>
Nice... but I can't see the advantages on accessibility / usability
on it. Would you mind telling me about them?
Clarification: When I say "religious topic" I don't mean any harm or
an insult in any way, it's just that all religions *I've heard of* are
something you trust on, that you have faith on, you don't evaluate them
or demand proves, you believe in them and defend them --I didn't want to
use "dogma".
______________________________________________________________________
css-discuss [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d
List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/
List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html
Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
