Hannes Magnusson skrev:
(a) using the target attribute to open links (also in user notes) in a new
window, which requires the frameset DTD. This should really be avoided. Most
users find such behavior annoying.
I find it really annoying clicking on links that don't open another
domain in new tabs. There is nothing more natural then to add target
to links leading away from the current site. Common courtesy if you
ask me.
I am relying on research done by Jacob Nielsen and other gurus in the
usability and accessibility crowd.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990530.html
(c)
<input type="image"
src="http://static.php.net/www.php.net/images/small_submit.gif";
id="changeLangImage" alt="" />
Missing alt-text. Should be something like "change language" (i.e.
describing function, not looks.) This is *not* a decorative image.
Fine. Fixed. Firefox doesn't display the value though.
Correct. Neither will Opera, Chrome, Safari or any other decent browser.
Alt text is not supposed to be displayed as a tooltip, since it is
intended to be shown (or spoken or felt through braille, etc) for users
that do not see the image. MSIE got this wrong and it has been killing
accessibility on the web ever since. MSIE is cleaning up their act, though.
(Want a tooltip? Use the title attribute! Want to shut down the tooltip
in MSIE? <img alt="foo" title="">)
(d) Notes are marked up as blockquotes. They are not quotes.
Ouh? The user said these things, why is that not a quote?
I was not referring to user submitted notes, but to the inline notes in
the boxes of the actual manual.
E.g: http://se.php.net/manual/en/intl.examples.basic.php
(e) Headings in the notes are marked up with the b-element, when they really
should be headings. This is "bed and breakfast" markup. <b> + <br> where a
heading is the right element fir the job.
You mean the "<small>User Contributed Notes</small><strong>page-name</strong>"?
Once again I was referring to the notes in the actual manual, but it
will apply to user notes as well.
Minor gripes:
(a) Anorectic anchors:
<a name="87685"></a>
<div class="note">
Should be shortened to:
<div id="87685" class="note">
Browser don't support it. They don't even support <a name="..." />...
and IDs cannot be integers, but names can :)
Stupid me, not noting that the ids were integers!
<div id="_87685" class="note">
Is however legal and will work in all browsers. Is that an option?
(b) The strong element is used to produce bold text, even though no emphasis
is intended. When the heading is repeated above the user contributed notes
it should be marked up as a heading. Not using strong.
Users that contribute notes should not be put in bold using strong either.
In fact HTML 5 *recommends* using the <b> element for exactly such usage:
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-cite-element
Confusing. This back and forth is annoying. Make up your mind people.
There was a time back in 2003/4 when people started to discover
standards in a big way, when developers like me stopped using <b> and
<i> since they were "unsemantic", and instead used <strong> and <em>,
even though we still only intended to get a bold or italic effect. Or
perhaps we used this monstrosity
<span style="font-weight: bold">word</span>
since the span element was unsemantic by nature.
There even exist quite a lot of posts on the internet saying that <b>
and <i> were deprecated in HTML 4.01 transitional and dropped in 4.01
strict. Or even more confusingly that they are allowed in HTML but
disallowed in XHTML, even though XHTNML 1.0 and HTML 4.01 share exactly
the same vocabularies!
The pendulum simply swung to far.
HTML 5 WG and WHATWG have discussed <b> and <i> and the large majority
agrees that they have a valid use, indicating "alternate voice or mood",
since that really is what people generally are intending - when they are
not abusing the elements to create headers...
Anyway, <strong> is really emphasized. Screen readers will almost shout.
<em> is normal emphasis, and screen readers will speak a bit louder than
usual. Braille terminals might provide emphasis through tactile means.
using strong and em when no emphasis is intended will really hurt
accessibility.
(d) Redundant classes?
<em class="emphasis"> When is <em> not used to denote emphasis?
This is application generated markup. It *must* to be possible to
distinguish docs/generated markup to regular markup.
Would it not be easier to put that once and for all on the containg
element? E.g. <div class="generated">
I'll add one more place where markup can be reduced. On pages such as
http://se.php.net/manual/en/array.constants.php we have a redundant
span-elements in the dt and perhaps also the dl elements. Why not apply
the class directly to dt and dd?
Lars Gunther
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