Hi Sarah, >Unfortunately the exact wording of the content (in this client's case) >is legally required, and so the possibility of editing it, or the >references, in any way is out of the question.
Moving the title of the reference to the fore of the title attribute value wouldn't be changing the reference (as it is shown in the endnotes), but representing it in a medium-appropriate manner? If the title attribute is too long it will be truncated anyway. It could be perceived that there's a similar issue of changing the content when adding alt attributes or long descriptions to images, in-page anchors, etc. It may come down to the relationship with the client, but if the protocol you recommend for implementing references on the website is formalised, then perhaps using the title attribute would be seen as a adding-value-to rather than 'changing' the reference? The client's web style guide would then be updated to ensure a consistent approach is taken to marking-up future documents (and get the legal team back on board). You could illustrate the issue of medium-specificity with how a search engine results page may excerpt a portion of a document (without the complete reference text). >I like the idea of linking back to the content once the reader has read >the relevant footnote, but there are many instances when more than one >footnote is attributed to a portion of the content (see example below). >Also, the same footnote reference is referred to in different portions >of the content. The example you've provide isn't too bad, you could create separate links for each reference marker (<a>[1]</a><a>[2]</a>). What's more problematic is the second situation you've identified where a single reference is linked to *twice* within the same document, e.g. <p>This paragraph is at the top of the document [1]</p> <p>....</p> <p>This one is further down the page, but also references the same document [1]</p> (Clarifying for the benefit of the avid reader.) Making clear to the user which of the two reference markers the user would jump back to, would perhaps be more trouble than it's worth. Looks like linking the reference back to the reference mark could be out then. Although the one-way system might not be too bad--the reader can still get a quick sense from the title attribute as to what the reference is to, and then read the full reference by clicking the link. I'm not against the JavaScript Sweet Titles option posted, but agree with the spirit of the usability observation on the entry that an overly-long tooltip may 'feel' unwieldy or provide more detail than might be expected/required from a short reference. Let me know the path you end up taking. As usual, there's no 'silver bullet'... Best regards, -- Andy Kirkwood | Creative Director Motive | web.design.integrity http://www.motive.co.nz ph: (04) 3 800 800 fx: (04) 970 9693 mob: 021 369 693 93 Rintoul St, Newtown PO Box 7150, Wellington South, New Zealand ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
