On 28 Aug 2010, at 23:39, E.J. Zufelt wrote: > I am suggesting that a different tab page would not be "navigation" in the > common sense, as the user is not leaving the current page, just switching > contexts within the application.
But the draft is explicit that links in a "nav" element might only switch contexts within the current page: "The nav element represents a section of a page that links to other pages or to parts within the page" http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/sections.html#the-nav-element It's not idiosyncratic to call tabpage-switching "navigation". Here's an example from the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library: http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/navigation/tabs/moduletabs.html > Another example might be where a tabstrip is used informationally, without > attached behavior, to indicate perhaps which step of a process a user is > currently on. I can imagine this being styled to look like a tabstrip, but I would not call a UI component that did not actually allow users to switch contexts to be a tabstrip. I'd suggest simply using a list here like so: <section> <h1>Order progress</h1> <ol> <li>Name and address</li> <li><span>Current step: </span>Order details</li> <li>Payment information</li> </ol> </section> With CSS, the "span" can be hidden (e.g. offscreen) and the current step marked with different colors and bold text, for example. > A list of tabs differs from a list of links, because when selecting a tab the > user expects the change to stay within a greater context. If I am logged > into a CMS and viewing a blog article, tabs may be View, Edit, Track Changes, > etc. As a tabstrip I expect these actions to be meaningful within the > current context of the article. These sound more like commands in a toolbar than a tablist. Couldn't you use the "menu" element? http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/interactive-elements.html#menus -- Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
