00:00
<Philip`>
(At least we're getting past the stage where alt = tooltip :-) )
00:00
<Philip`>
(except for most of the web, which is in quirks mode and will still work like that for most users)
00:03
<Philip`>
Hmm, IE8b2's inline search UI way more complex than in Firefox and Opera
00:04
<Philip`>
They both have a labelled box to type into, and Opera also has a close button, and that's it
00:04
<webben_>
Philip`: that's not it
00:04
<Philip`>
IE has all that, and previous and next buttons, and a meaningless icon button (for Highlight All Matches), and an Options drop-down menu for whole-word and case matching
00:05
<Philip`>
plus a little vertical bar after that, for no discernible reason
00:08
<Philip`>
Also, IE is the only browser (out of IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome) where the scrollbar doesn't quite extend to the edge of the screen, so you have to move your mouse all the way across and then carefully pull it back by a single pixel before you can drag the bar
00:08
<webben_>
nm, thought you were talking about find generally.
00:08
<webben_>
I don't see why there should be different interfaces for different types of find operation though.
00:09
<Philip`>
Ah - Opera's normal ctrl+f dialog box is pretty ugly
00:09
<webben_>
what I find annoying about IE's find implementation is that you have to press the tab key to get focus on a found link
00:09
<Philip`>
and I didn't know Firefox's ctrl+f had all those extra buttons too
00:09
<webben_>
(oh, and you can't afaik just search for link)
00:09
<Philip`>
but at least it doesn't embed a dropdown menu in it :-)
00:10
<webben_>
Philip`: note also the difference in fx between ' (quickfind links) and " (find everything)
00:10
<webben_>
by contrast in other browsers, you can just press enter (or whatever) to follow the link
00:11
<Philip`>
By '"', do you mean '/'? (That's what key it seems to be on my copy)
00:11
Philip`
wasn't aware of the find-in-links at all
00:11
<webben_>
could be (i'm using Fx3 mac)
00:12
<Philip`>
I think Opera wins for find-some-text-somewhere-near-a-link-and-then-activate-the-link-by-keyboard because of the spatnav thing, so you just have to get close enough to the link and then it's easy to select
00:14
<webben_>
Opera wipes the floor with other browsers for keyboard navigation
00:14
<webben_>
(at least other visual browsers)
00:14
<webben_>
e.g. quick keys
00:14
<Philip`>
Oh, right, the vertical bar in IE's find toolbar is so that it can say "No matches found" a million miles away from where your eyes are focussing on the box you're typing into
00:15
<webben_>
would be nice if opera had a find-in-links feature too though
00:16
<Philip`>
webben_: I think it does, via the ',' key
00:16
<webben_>
oooh even more awesome :)
00:18
<Philip`>
(Hmm, Firefox and Chrome both make a ding sound and show some red stuff in the search box when there's no matches, which seems sufficiently obvious)
00:18
<webben_>
I guess an icon or something works for colorblind/deaf people too?
00:18
<Philip`>
(Opera at least puts the "No matches" text directly adjacent to the search text input)
00:19
<webben_>
that's craziness, related text should obviously be as far away from where you're looking as possible.
00:19
<Philip`>
webben_: Firefox says "Phrase not found" too, and Chrome says "0 of 0" too, so I guess that's sufficient
00:20
<webben_>
"0 of 0" seems a bit weird.
00:20
<Philip`>
webben_: That seems to be the principle behind IE's UI :-)
00:24
<Philip`>
Woah
00:24
<Philip`>
Chrome does something funny to the scrollbar when you search
00:24
<Philip`>
I think it's drawing a little horizontal line corresponding to the position of each match
00:24
<Philip`>
but I'm searching the HTML5 spec for "e" so the whole scrollbar is solid yellow and takes three seconds to draw
00:25
<Philip`>
("41 of 149900")
00:26
<jruderman>
lol
00:28
<Philip`>
Actually, that's kind of neat - I can search for e.g. "database" and it'll show where the highest concentration of mentions is, which is probably where I want to be reading
00:29
<webben_>
that does sound neat :)
00:31
<Philip`>
Similarly I can search for "XHTML" and see that pretty much all of the body of the spec does not mention it once
01:20
<gsnedders>
Lachy: I need to get the photos off those who took them
01:20
<gsnedders>
Anyhow, I'm off
09:42
<Hixie>
othermaciej: note that google is fully funding someone to work 100% on writing html5, which is a pretty big commitment to standards itself
09:42
<Hixie>
othermaciej: also, gears has been doing a lot of work around making their apis compatible with html5's
09:43
<Hixie>
i don't know if any of it has shipped yet, but certainly html5 comes up a lot in their code reviews
09:53
<Lachy>
cool, Justin is pushing for someone to fork the spec. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Sep/0224.html
09:54
<zcorpan>
i've gotten webkit to (1) happily create the new document (2) freeze and (3) crash when playing with createDocument(x, y, document.doctype)
09:54
<zcorpan>
which one happens depends on y
09:56
<zcorpan>
writing web dom core is fun
09:57
<Hixie>
Lachy: btw for your study it would be good to have a third (control) group that had no image descriptions, and then compare which of the groups most ably completed the relevant task
09:57
<Hixie>
Lachy: (this is to test the hypothesis that detailed out-of-band image descriptions actually help blind users)
09:57
<aboodman>
I've decided to go straight for html6, personally.
09:57
<Hixie>
aboodman: i'll see you there in a couple of decades :-P
10:00
<zcorpan>
ok, DOMImplementation is done
10:01
<zcorpan>
or well hasFeature needs expanding
10:01
<heycam>
zcorpan, link?
10:01
<zcorpan>
http://simon.html5.org/specs/web-dom-core
10:02
<heycam>
thanks
10:02
<aboodman>
i saw on the blogosphere that ff 3.1 will have worker support
10:02
<aboodman>
it isn't clear which version though
10:03
<roc>
the current version
10:03
<zcorpan>
http://simon.html5.org/sandbox/bookmarklets/reveal-comments might be useful when reading web dom core
10:04
<roc>
BenT wrote he'll be updating the syntax to match the current spec before beta1
10:04
<aboodman>
roc: as in the current html5 draft?
10:04
<roc>
yeah
10:04
<heycam>
nice bookmarklet zcorpan!
10:04
<aboodman>
cool
10:04
<roc>
of course, "the current version" is a variable, not a constant, so ...
10:04
<roc>
:-)
10:04
<aboodman>
right, i'm a little concerned about that
10:05
<zcorpan>
heycam: thanks :)
10:05
<roc>
well, this issue comes up whenever we do anything
10:06
<aboodman>
it's almost as if there is some fundamental design flaw in the way apis are versioned on the web :)
10:06
<aboodman>
sorry, couldn't resist
10:06
<roc>
well
10:06
<Hixie>
i hope people take justin up on his suggestion in http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Sep/0224.html
10:07
<Hixie>
i could do with the motivation :-)
10:07
<roc>
my response to that is, "APIs are hard"
10:08
<aboodman>
i commend you guys pushing forward
10:08
<aboodman>
is there a schedule for FF 3.1 somewhere?
10:08
<roc>
sort of
10:09
<roc>
we were going to try to ship this year, but we won't do that now. Currently I think we're closing for beta1 end of this month, ship early next year
10:09
<annevk>
so does that also mean Mozilla will not introduce a second HTTP API in ECMAScript as I saw mentioned somewhere in one of the Workers bugs?
10:09
<roc>
annevk: I don't know
10:10
<roc>
ask bent
10:10
<aboodman>
ah, from the blagoweb, i got the impression 3.1 was upon us
10:10
<roc>
it's on a short leash.
10:11
<roc>
if you want to find out more, check mozilla.dev.plannng
10:11
<aboodman>
thanks
10:11
<roc>
or dial in to the project planning meetings, they're public access :-)
10:12
<roc>
and the wiki notes are posted to planet.mozilla
10:12
<Lachy>
Hixie, I considered a control group, but I figured it wouldn't matter since the questions were only going to be designed to make the user navigate the page, and their final answers didn't really matter. Only whether they used the longdesc="" to access the description
10:13
<Lachy>
but I suppose it could also be extended to test the effectiveness of long descriptions
10:13
<Hixie>
well there's no point having them even if they navigate to them if they don't actually help
10:13
<Hixie>
of course to do this we'd have to find a page with actually useful longdesc=""s
10:13
<Hixie>
so as to not bias the study by making up artificial pages
10:13
<Lachy>
Joshue's videos already provided observational evidence that the descriptions are useful
10:14
<Hixie>
really?
10:14
<Hixie>
uri?
10:14
<aboodman>
roc: mailing list looks useful, thanks
10:14
<Hixie>
i don't recall seeing them be useful
10:15
<Lachy>
the user he was testing said that they helped him to understand the images better
10:15
<Hixie>
the user he was testing also said that summary was useless and then that summary was useful
10:15
<Lachy>
yeah
10:16
<Hixie>
i mean i have great respect for the guy, but people in usability studies are notorious for thinking everything is useful
10:16
<Hixie>
you should see some of our studies at google, where users are like "ooh that rocks" but when we do actual studies to see if it helps them, the features actually hurts them
10:16
<Hixie>
it's rather sad
10:16
<Hixie>
hurt, even
10:16
<Lachy>
that's true, and it's quite obvious that the guy's answers were being influenced by Joshue with the way the questions were asked
10:16
<roc>
I've heard of examples like that
10:17
<roc>
users like bling even when it slows them down
10:17
<Lachy>
can any of the studies Google has done on the issue be published?
10:17
<Hixie>
we haven't done anything on longdesc
10:17
<Hixie>
as far as i know
10:17
<Lachy>
ok. Could you?
10:18
<Hixie>
i'd love to, but i doubt it
10:18
<Lachy>
it doesn't seem likely that anyone from the accessibility community is interested in doing the one I proposed, nor any others
10:18
<Hixie>
we don't really have the infrastructure set up to do studies of non-visual users in their usual environment (which is the only real way to do these kinds of studies for those users)
10:19
<Hixie>
i'll mention it to our usability people though, maybe if they do another set of home studies for visually impaired users they can slide that in
10:19
<Hixie>
unlikely to happen any time soon though
10:19
<Lachy>
ok
10:19
<Hixie>
if at all
10:20
<zcorpan>
you could perhaps do remote studying if the user has a webcam
10:20
<Hixie>
(also i could never release the videos, for privacy reasons)
10:21
<roc>
Park Google Street View outside their houses and watch through the windows
10:21
<Hixie>
hah
10:21
<Lachy>
LOL
10:22
<Lachy>
the problem with a remote study is that the conditions can't be controlled well
10:23
<zcorpan>
but it's a lot cheaper (i guess) so you can do more
10:24
<Lachy>
I suppose I could email Joshue directly is see if he's willing to do it
10:26
<Hixie>
turns out that a lot of blind users don't have webcams. (weird, i know)
10:27
<zcorpan>
perhaps you could do studies without webcams
10:27
<Hixie>
it's hard to do studies without actually seeing the user
10:27
<zcorpan>
yeah
10:27
<Hixie>
half the data you get from a usability study is observing the user's body language
10:27
<Hixie>
anyway
10:27
<Hixie>
if you can get a study, i encourage you to do so
10:28
<Hixie>
anything is better than nothing
10:28
<Hixie>
even if not ideal
10:29
<Lachy>
perhaps a sample website could be set up, provide the questionnaire with it online, and get blind users to complete the study from home. That way we can see where they went from the logs and how they answered the questionnaire. The only problem is eliminating cheaters.
10:31
<Hixie>
Lachy: not a bad idea
10:32
Hixie
prepares for a flood of flame mail
10:32
<othermaciej>
Hixie: well I hope Google's actions come together and end up being pro-standards
10:33
<othermaciej>
Hixie: I certainly don't think any of the technical people involved (many of whom I know) are acting in bad faith
10:33
<Hixie>
othermaciej: i expect they will. there's a lot of good will, it's just not very well coordinated. Google is a very engineer-driven company, as opposed to manager-driven
10:33
<Hixie>
othermaciej: so engineers have to be converted to the standards way, as opposed to being told to "do standards"
10:34
<othermaciej>
I know that sometimes combination of business needs and randomness of priorities can lead to weird looking outcomes
10:34
<Hixie>
yeah
10:35
<Hixie>
that too
10:35
<Lachy>
Hixie, I expect you'll get a lot of responses trying to say how the problem longdesc solves is obvious. Although, in all cases I've seen, the information in the description is useful to everyone, not just those with ATs
10:35
<othermaciej>
I don't think it is the engineering side of Google that evangelizes other companies to code to Gears APIs but I wouldn't really know
10:35
<othermaciej>
in any case hopefully the relevant people are susceptible to public encouragement to do teh right thing
10:35
<Hixie>
othermaciej: is there any part of google that evangelizes other companies to code to Gears APIs?
10:36
<othermaciej>
Hixie: well, a number were held up as exemplars at Google I/O, with big formal announcements
10:36
<othermaciej>
e.g. MySpace
10:36
<annevk>
WordPress
10:37
<Hixie>
i might be mistaken, but i think google i/o was almost exclusively engineer driven
10:37
<Hixie>
but i might be wrong
10:37
<Hixie>
so i'll shut up now :-)
10:37
<aboodman>
no, there is a heavy dose of marketing at those events
10:37
<Hixie>
aboodman would know better
10:38
<aboodman>
this ship is going to take some time to turn around
10:39
<aboodman>
but it will turn
10:39
<Hixie>
annevk: some kind of caching on the web-apps-tracker would be really nice *pleading face*
10:39
<othermaciej>
I know Apple at times has misguided people who are for trying to push corners of Web technology in a not-entirely-open direction
10:39
<othermaciej>
it is work to keep them at bay
10:39
<Hixie>
annevk: right now there are like a dozen connections from html5.org to svn.whatwg.org and it's driving the load up way high
10:40
<othermaciej>
and making WebKit be a real open source project instead of bare-minimum passive-aggressive open source was itself a ship that took time to turn around
10:40
<Hixie>
yeah i bet that was a hell of a job
10:41
<annevk>
oh :/
10:41
<Hixie>
annevk: i don't really understand what the cause is
10:41
<aboodman>
See the geolocation api as an example of the way I'd like things to work more often.
10:41
<Hixie>
annevk: it seems to happen every now and then
10:41
<aboodman>
which, btw, i don't think we ever got any apple feedback on ;)
10:42
<annevk>
I guess people link to it now and then in channels or so
10:42
Hixie
prods othermaciej for feedback on workers, too :-P
10:42
<othermaciej>
Hixie: oh yeah
10:42
aboodman
prods self
10:42
<Hixie>
annevk: yeah but it always seems to be a random set of revisions
10:42
<othermaciej>
I both owe direct feedback and owe more reminders to ap to give feeback
10:42
<annevk>
Hixie, oh ok
10:42
<othermaciej>
Hixie: you can imagine I have been somewhat distracted in light of recent eents and all
10:42
<annevk>
Hixie, is the frontpage less of an issue?
10:43
<annevk>
Hixie, because for the frontpage I don't really have an idea how to cache it properly
10:43
<Hixie>
annevk: like right now you're hitting web-apps for r2016, r1979, r2002, and r2035
10:43
<Hixie>
annevk: well, for the front page you just need the log of recent messages, right?
10:44
<Hixie>
annevk: so you could just cache that for five minutes (only hit the server once every five minutes or something)
10:44
<Hixie>
annevk: but for per-revision pages, seems like you could cache those forever
10:45
<annevk>
the front page does svn log with a limit
10:45
<annevk>
an individual revision does svn log + svn diff
10:46
<annevk>
yeah, the per-revision pages are easier
10:47
<annevk>
hopefully I can do this tonight or tomorrow
10:47
<Hixie>
cool
10:49
<Hixie>
hey macdome
10:49
<eseidel>
hi Hixie, aboodman
10:51
<aboodman>
eseidel? up at 3am? SHOCKING
10:51
<eseidel>
aboodman: just got home :)
10:51
<eseidel>
hangin w/ some friends. beating Castle CRashers
10:55
<eseidel>
an now checkin in with my webkit peeps before betd
10:57
<zcorpan>
bah, acid3 tests doctype.internalSubset :(
10:57
<zcorpan>
in webkit it's always null
10:57
<zcorpan>
so clearly it's not needed for web compat
10:59
<zcorpan>
Hixie: i want to drop internalSubset from dom core. could you change acid3 to not rely on it?
10:59
<zcorpan>
assertEquals(doc.firstChild.internalSubset, null, "internalSubset wrong (first test)");
10:59
<zcorpan>
assertEquals(doc.firstChild.internalSubset, null, "internalSubset wrong (second test)");
11:00
<roc>
hey I just fixed that in Gecko
11:01
<zcorpan>
roc: oh? would you like to keep it in dom core then?
11:01
<roc>
I don't really care
11:01
<zcorpan>
ok
11:01
<annevk>
removing useless code seems like a win
11:01
<roc>
it is a bit disturbing that Acid3 tests for it not being present, but doesn't test for it being present
11:02
<annevk>
zcorpan, btw, you're not handling undefined in the IDL, should that really become "undefined" everywhere?
11:02
<zcorpan>
annevk: dunno
11:02
<zcorpan>
annevk: haven't looked at undefined yet
11:02
<Hixie>
i've made the test allow the property to be completely absent
11:02
<zcorpan>
Hixie: thanks!
11:03
<Hixie>
zcorpan: (bear in mind that we'll still have to define what it should do if present, just like e.g. body.vLink will be defined in the "obsolete DOM attributes" section in html5)
11:03
<zcorpan>
Hixie: yeah, my plan was to just drop it
11:04
<Hixie>
are UAs going to remove support?
11:04
<zcorpan>
dunno
11:04
<zcorpan>
roc?
11:04
<roc>
don't ask me, I just fixed the bug
11:05
<roc>
if you remove it from the spec and send us a patch to remove support, I'm pretty sure we'd take it :-)
11:05
<zcorpan>
:)
11:05
<zcorpan>
opera developers are always happy to remove code
11:05
<roc>
I'm not a DOM Guy, I just fixed the bug for fun
11:06
<roc>
all developers are always happy to remove code
11:06
<roc>
I hope
11:07
<Hixie>
all good ones, yes
11:08
<Lachy>
Hixie, which test number did you just update?
11:08
<Hixie>
(also some bad ones, q.v. debian's changes to ssl keygen...)
11:08
<Lachy>
in acid3
11:08
<Hixie>
71
11:08
<Lachy>
ok, I'll update our copy on Opera's test server
11:16
<Lachy>
oh, did you update test #7 recently too? It had a change that wasn't in my local copy
11:17
<Hixie>
oh yeah
11:18
<Hixie>
hmm
11:18
<Hixie>
in <div><form></div><input> the input is obviously associated with the form
11:19
<Hixie>
but in <form id=a><div><form></div><fieldset form=a><input>, what is the input associated with? form#a, or the second form?
11:20
<Hixie>
also, how about <form id=a></form><fieldset form=a><div><form></div><input>
11:22
<Lachy>
Hixie, could acid3 be made available via svn or something, so that whenever you make a change, we can just do svn update, instead of having to copy and paste the changes manually?
11:22
webben_
finds this vaguely amusing: http://www.css-zibaldone.com/articles/logo/creating.html : providing a D-link for a background-image.
11:22
<Hixie>
lachy: remind me for acid4
11:22
<Lachy>
ok
11:22
<Hixie>
Lachy: (i don't want to go through the pain of doing this for acid3)
11:23
<Lachy>
ok. In that case, just remember to notify me whenver a change is made so I can update our test server
11:23
annevk
decides to take a look at caching now
11:23
annevk
summons Python IO docs
11:26
Hixie
considers just dropping the fieldset association
11:26
Hixie
considers dropping form="" altogether
11:27
<zcorpan>
Hixie: without form='', how do you do forms for each row in a table?
11:29
<Hixie>
you don't, but with form="", i don't know how to make the parsing work
11:29
<Hixie>
especially if we have fieldset-scoping
11:29
<zcorpan>
we could drop fieldset-scoping
11:30
<Hixie>
yeah, that's one of the two things i just said i was considering :-)
11:31
<zcorpan>
i mean, i'd rather fieldset scoping was dropped than form='' was dropped :)
11:32
<Hixie>
dropped
11:32
<webben_>
can't you just make form= take priority over preceding form or fieldset, but not over proceeding form?
11:32
webben_
maybe quite misunderstanding the problem.
11:33
<Hixie>
what would that do to the examples above?
11:33
<Hixie>
in <form id=a><div><form></div><fieldset form=a><input>, what is the input associated with? form#a, or the second form?
11:33
<Hixie>
and how about <form id=a></form><fieldset form=a><div><form></div><input>
11:33
<Hixie>
(and why?)
11:35
<webben_>
if </form> getting inferred before </div> there?
11:35
<webben_>
*is
11:35
<Hixie>
no
11:36
<webben_>
that's somewhat confusing
11:36
<webben_>
is that for legacy compat?
11:36
<Hixie>
yes
11:36
<Hixie>
yes
11:36
<Hixie>
(search for "form element pointer")
11:41
<webben_>
example 1) form=a takes priority over preceeding form, so input is associated with form=a; example 2) input is associated with form.
11:41
<Hixie>
why does it take priority?
11:42
<webben_>
to follow the apparent declared authorial intent mostly
11:42
<Hixie>
i mean, what is the algorithm used to determine that it takes priority?
11:42
<webben_>
oh
11:42
<Hixie>
are we walking the tree every time the parser inserts an <input> element?
11:44
<Hixie>
also, in case 2, does changing the id of either form change the association of <input>?
11:44
<Hixie>
(consider in particular the case where it changes the association of the <fieldset>, since the <input> is a child of the <fieldset> and not of either form)
11:47
<webben_>
Hixie: could the parser store something to indicate whether the nearest ancestor was a form= or form?
11:47
<webben_>
rather than walking the tree again to find out?
11:48
<Hixie>
the DOM can change while the parser is running
11:48
<webben_>
ah okay, then yes, it would involve walking the tree
11:49
<Hixie>
that's not really going to fly
11:49
<webben_>
presumably that's expensive, yeah
11:49
<Hixie>
also i don't really understand what the condition you are proposing is
11:49
<Hixie>
that would give different results in those two cases
11:51
<webben_>
Hixie: The thinking is something like: we want to associate an input with a form, but an input can't belong to two forms. So if nearest ancestor is form, it should belong to that. But if nearest ancestor is form= then the author has gone to trouble to specify which form it belongs to,
11:51
<webben_>
so it should belong to that.
11:52
<Hixie>
then wouldn't it be associated form form#a in both cases?
11:52
<annevk>
implemented caching, not sure it works
11:52
<Hixie>
cool, thanks
11:52
<hsivonen>
Lachy: fwiw, I think JF et al are right about the flaw of your longdesc user testing setup
11:52
<Hixie>
will let you know if i see peak load again
11:53
<webben_>
no it would be associated with form#a in the first case, since fieldset form=a is nearest ancestor
11:53
<Hixie>
webben_: in both cases, the nearest ancestor is a <fieldset form=a>
11:53
<hsivonen>
Lachy: otoh, longdesc has been out of the user testing *lab* in the real world for a decade and has failed in the ultimate lab
11:54
<webben_>
Hixie: then I'm misunderstanding the form element pointer stuff.
11:54
<webben_>
<form id=a></form><fieldset form=a><div><form></div><input> I thought <form> there was an ancestor of <input>?
11:54
<annevk>
I did not implement caching for the home page. For individual diff pages, I simply create a file each time a new diff is generated (identifier, from, to, context) and check before the diff is retrieved from svn.whatwg.org whether such a file exists
11:54
<Hixie>
webben_: play with hsivonen's live dom viewer to see the dom you would get from the parser
11:55
<Hixie>
webben_: the pointer is just set to the last <form> seen, and is reset to null by </form>
11:55
<annevk>
so changes to the formatting of the diff should not affect the cache
11:55
<webben_>
Hixie: yep, but that's why I thought <form> was the ancestor
11:55
<Hixie>
webben_: in the example you just quoted, the ancestors of input are, in reverse order, fieldset, body, html, #document
11:56
<annevk>
some algorithm is however certainly possible as we implemented this :)
11:57
<webben_>
oh okay, I don't understand that, but yeah in that case fieldset form=a is ancestor, points to form#a and therefore input belongs to form#a ?
11:57
<Hixie>
annevk: so what does opera do?
11:58
<annevk>
oh, I haven't looked into this
11:59
<Hixie>
opera gets different results for:
11:59
<Hixie>
<form id=a></form><fieldset><div><form id=b></div><input>
11:59
<Hixie>
<form id=a></form><fieldset form=a><div><form id=b></div><input>
11:59
<Hixie>
...which seems like it would be expensive to do reliably
11:59
<Hixie>
and thus shouldn't be required by the spec
12:00
<Hixie>
(it involves attribute lookups on the ancestor chain during parsing)
12:00
<annevk>
well, caching is certainly working
12:00
<Hixie>
cool, thanks
12:00
<annevk>
contents of the caching folder is growing rapidly :)
12:00
<Hixie>
:-)
12:00
<Hixie>
who's using the page?
12:01
<Hixie>
googlebot?
12:01
<annevk>
no bots, they are forbidden per robots.txt
12:01
<webben_>
is this hsivonen's live dom viewer? http://parsetree.validator.nu/ ?
12:01
<zcorpan>
webben_: no, http://livedom.validator.nu/
12:01
<Hixie>
http://livedom.validator.nu/
12:01
<webben_>
is there a tools page where all these things are listed?
12:02
<Hixie>
damowmow.com/portal/ has a list of some of them
12:02
<Hixie>
on the right hand side
12:02
<annevk>
sorry for not doing this earlier as it was a twenty minute hack (adding about 10 lines of code)
12:02
<Hixie>
np
12:02
<webben_>
ah neat
12:02
<Hixie>
it wasn't serious, but it was becoming a minor annoyance :-)
12:04
<hsivonen>
Hixie: why does form="" affect parsing? isn't it resolved on the above-DOM layer?
12:05
<Hixie>
hsivonen: because of the form element pointer
12:05
<hsivonen>
Hixie: can't you just say that form='' overrides the form element pointer
12:05
<Hixie>
hsivonen: as the spec stood until about 12 seconds ago, form="" would never have any effect, because the form element pointer wasn't conditional on the attribute, and just always set the association
12:05
<hsivonen>
Hixie: and have the parser set the pointer always
12:06
<Hixie>
hsivonen: we can, but then we still don't get <fieldset> association, unless we want to crawl the ancestor chain at some point and decide how we decide what owns what
12:06
<hsivonen>
Hixie: so that the above-DOM layer looks at form='' first, form pointer second and containment third
12:06
<hsivonen>
oh. right
12:06
<hsivonen>
that sucks
12:06
<Hixie>
well for now i've dropped fieldset association altogether
12:07
<Hixie>
the main use case was table rows
12:07
<Hixie>
where it wouldn't help anyway
12:07
<hsivonen>
Hixie: but don't parsers have to crawl the ancestor chain for dynamically inserted form controls anyway?
12:07
<hsivonen>
s/parsers/browsers/
12:07
<Hixie>
they do now, yes, but it's a single crawl at a well-defined time
12:07
<Hixie>
(insertion)
12:08
<Hixie>
and doesn't involve looking at attributes on the ancestors
12:08
<Hixie>
just looking for a form
12:08
hsivonen
tries to find Hixie's bug report in IRC logs
12:08
<Hixie>
<dl><dd></span> complained about a </p> iirc
12:09
<hsivonen>
Hixie: thanks
12:09
<hsivonen>
nope, that's not sufficient
12:09
<Hixie>
<dl><dt><dd><span></dd></dl>
12:09
<Hixie>
Error: End tag for p seen, but there were unclosed elements.
12:09
<hsivonen>
right. Thanks
12:11
<zcorpan>
<ol><li><span></li></ol> gives the same
12:11
<annevk>
not a single diff request with context other than 10
12:11
<annevk>
well, within the last few minutes
12:11
<annevk>
I guess I should check again next week or so
12:12
<Hixie>
hsivonen: btw, why does the text field jump around when i do a text field validation?
12:12
<hsivonen>
Hixie: to order the submission data right
12:12
<Hixie>
it's really disconcerting
12:13
<hsivonen>
Hixie: would it be better to empty the textarea and stuff the data in a trailing input type=hidden?
12:13
<zcorpan>
hsivonen: or disable the textarea?
12:13
<Hixie>
well, first i'd ask why you have to do anything at all
12:13
<hsivonen>
zcorpan: that might be better
12:14
<Hixie>
but you really don't want to be depending on script for something like this
12:14
<Hixie>
s/but/and/
12:14
<hsivonen>
Hixie: the other fields contain data that the validator has to have before it starts reading the document input
12:14
<zcorpan>
Hixie: the feature isn't available without script
12:14
<Hixie>
hsivonen: you can't buffer 512 bytes?
12:14
<Hixie>
hsivonen: or even 2MB?
12:16
<hsivonen>
Hixie: I *could*, but it's much nicer when IO streams
12:17
<hsivonen>
Hixie: (I do end up caching the data [as UTF-16 even] for show source)
12:17
<Hixie>
hsivonen: seems dubious to me. but if you really want to do it this way, then just have the textarea not be named, and copy it into a hidden field oninput and onchange
12:18
<hsivonen>
Hixie: ok.
12:18
<zcorpan>
file upload is trickier :)
12:19
<Hixie>
incidentally, XMLNS Filter doesn't appear to be a label like the other labels
12:19
<Hixie>
oh no
12:19
<Hixie>
the text field is jus disabled
12:19
<Hixie>
nevermind
12:19
<hsivonen>
Hixie: the field should be disabled when the HTML parser is selected
12:20
<hsivonen>
Hixie: is type=email staying?
12:20
<Hixie>
i have no plans to not merge it in
12:20
<Hixie>
which is as close to "yes" as i'm willing to commit :-)
12:20
<hsivonen>
Hixie: ok
12:21
<hsivonen>
Hixie: do you have plans to change normative references when it comes to non-ASCII characters in type=email?
12:21
<Hixie>
i have no plans either way
12:22
<Hixie>
i'm not aware of an issue
12:22
<hsivonen>
ok
12:22
<Hixie>
but i'm sure there's mail about it if there is one
12:23
<Hixie>
ok, one attribute down (form). About 150 to go.
12:23
<Hixie>
bed time
12:23
<hsivonen>
if there's an open-source Java library that implements exactly what type=email parsing requires, I'd like to know
12:23
<Hixie>
nn
12:23
<hsivonen>
nn
12:24
<annevk>
fixed a small bug
12:31
<annevk>
I had to specialcase revTo=0
12:32
<annevk>
hsivonen, it will change
12:32
<hsivonen>
annevk: type=email?
12:32
<annevk>
hsivonen, IDN e-mail is under discussion at various places, though currently experimental RFCs only per my understanding
12:33
<hsivonen>
sigh
12:33
<annevk>
I would expect that to effect type=email long term, yes
12:33
<hsivonen>
I suppose I can't fix type=email next week, then
12:33
<annevk>
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5335.txt
12:33
<annevk>
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5336.txt
12:33
<annevk>
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5337.txt
12:33
<hsivonen>
I've already postponed it for a *long* time
12:33
<hsivonen>
annevk: thanks
12:33
zcorpan
just specced createElement()
12:35
<annevk>
zcorpan, shouldn't it match the NCName production?
12:35
<zcorpan>
annevk: no
12:35
<annevk>
zcorpan, also, I sort of doubt that matches implementations, as I believe browsers have hacks for <div ...> and such
12:35
<zcorpan>
annevk: that's createElementNS
12:35
<zcorpan>
annevk: hmm
12:35
<zcorpan>
need to test that
12:38
<zcorpan>
http://software.hixie.ch/utilities/js/live-dom-viewer/?%3C!DOCTYPE%20html%3E%0D%0Ax%3Cscript%3E%0D%0Atry%20%7B%0D%0Avar%20e%20%3D%20document.createElement('%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22test%22%3E')%3B%0D%0Aw(e.tagName)%0D%0Aw(e.attributes%5B0%5D.name)%0D%0Aw(e.attributes%5B0%5D.value)%0D%0A%7D%20catch(e)%20%7B%0D%0Aw(e)%0D%0A%7D%0D%0A%3C%2Fscript%3E
12:38
<zcorpan>
ie doesn't work for me right now
12:39
<zcorpan>
opera, firefox and webkit throw
12:39
<annevk>
drop the DOCTYPE
12:40
<annevk>
and use something like <div>
12:40
<annevk>
works in Firefox (I'm currently using Opera with DOCTYPE override in effect, so there it never works.)
12:41
<zcorpan>
http://software.hixie.ch/utilities/js/live-dom-viewer/?x%3Cscript%3E%0Atry%20%7B%0Avar%20e%20%3D%20document.createElement(%27%3Cdiv%3E%27)%3B%0Aw(e.tagName)%0A%7D%20catch(e)%20%7B%0Aw(e)%0A%7D%0A%3C%2Fscript%3E
12:41
<zcorpan>
doesn't work in opera or webkit
12:41
<annevk>
interesting
12:42
<annevk>
maybe someone should slap the Gecko guys then :)
12:42
<zcorpan>
:)
12:45
hsivonen
replies to JF against his better judgment
12:46
<zcorpan>
should createElement() lowercase the argument?
12:49
annevk
is tempted to say yes
12:50
<hsivonen>
is it black-box-testable via localName?
12:51
<zcorpan>
hsivonen: yeah, you can see if "BR" creates a linebreak or not
12:51
<zcorpan>
hsivonen: and it should be testable via localName too
12:53
<Lachy>
hsivonen, re "I agree that Lachlan's research setup has the problem you described" from your latest mail to public-html. I already addressed the problem John described regarding the existing poor implementations by saying it could be done with newer, improved implementations.
12:54
<Lachy>
if even newer, improved implementations suffer from the same problem, then there isn't much hope for it in the wild
12:56
<hsivonen>
Lachy: the problem your setup has is that it doesn't test how people would behave in a hypothetical sitution if they haven't been able to develop routines in the hypothetical environment
12:56
<hsivonen>
Lachy: of course, testing if the hypothetical situation could be useful is pointless if there is no route form where we are to the hypothetical situation
12:58
<Lachy>
sure, but that's a fundamental problem with the whole idea of longdesc, because they haven't yet shown that they can even get there. They just seem to be basing their argument on the hope they somehow they will in some unspecified amount of time with some unspecified solution
12:59
<hsivonen>
Lachy: I think a decade of failure outside the lab is a much stronger argument that what could be obtained through your test setup
13:00
<Lachy>
hsivonen, sure. but the test setup has the advantage of being able to do it with better implementations than is currenlty widely deployed, and the ability to compare 2 different solutions
13:01
<Lachy>
it just annoys me how they keep ignoring the alternative solution of using ordinary links, which also has the advantage of making it available to everyone
13:02
<othermaciej>
does anyone have the intent of actually performing whatever the test is?
13:02
<Lachy>
othermaciej, we would need someone like Joshue who has the resources available to do it. But so far, no-one has volunteered to do it
13:05
<annevk>
oops, svn.whatwg.org will still get hits for svn log, even for diff pages
13:05
<zcorpan>
should createTextNode raise an exception if it doesn't match the Char production?
13:05
<annevk>
but svn log is probably not as problematic as svn diff
13:06
zcorpan
goes with "no"
13:15
<zcorpan>
what about createComment? should it throw for "foo -- bar" or "foo -"?
13:16
<jgraham>
WDBD?
13:17
<zcorpan>
jgraham: ?
13:17
<jgraham>
What Do Browsers Do?
13:17
<jgraham>
:)
13:18
jgraham
is just passing through on his way to a different desktop
13:18
<zcorpan>
http://software.hixie.ch/utilities/js/live-dom-viewer/?%3C!DOCTYPE%20html%3E%0D%0Ax%3Cscript%3E%0D%0Atry%20%7B%0D%0Avar%20e%20%3D%20document.createComment('foo--bar')%3B%0D%0Aw(e.data)%0D%0A%7D%20catch(e)%20%7B%0D%0Aw(e)%0D%0A%7D%0D%0A%3C%2Fscript%3E
13:18
<zcorpan>
opera strips the dashes
13:18
<jgraham>
So maybe I'm not making any sense :)
13:18
<zcorpan>
firefox throws
13:18
<zcorpan>
webkit allows it
13:19
<zcorpan>
i need to get ie working...
13:19
zcorpan
reboots
13:19
<jgraham>
Silent data loss sounds bad
13:26
Philip`
has filed a bug about Opera stripping slashes in createComment
13:27
<Philip`>
312761
13:27
<Philip`>
because it made my Live HTML5 Parser thing not work as desired
13:28
<hsivonen>
Philip`: I apply infoset coercion to make Gecko not throw
13:32
<Philip`>
Maybe someone should fork the HTML5 spec and put it on a wiki so anyone can edit it
13:33
<Dashiva>
htmlpedia, the web standard anyone can edit?
13:33
<Dashiva>
Might be hard to implement
13:35
<Philip`>
Not at all - you just edit the standard to match your implementation
13:37
<Philip`>
annevk: Have you committed the updated web-apps-tracker to SVN?
13:37
<annevk>
no, will do that later
13:37
<annevk>
tonight I hope
13:37
<annevk>
have to go now
13:37
<annevk>
well, I had to go -40 minutes
13:49
webben_
isn't sure what the advantage of the mailing lists has been over bug trackers and wikis.
13:50
<webben_>
mailing lists make it much harder to follow chains of discussion that last months
13:51
<jgraham>
hsivonen: I assume David meant "something else that provides long descriptions for images"
13:52
<jgraham>
webben_: I'm not sure bug trackers are good for discussion around an issue
13:52
<hsivonen>
jgraham: yeah. So I realized just after hitting send. :-(
13:52
<hsivonen>
webben_: wikis make it even harder
13:53
<webben_>
jgraham: no bug trackers are good for tracking bugs :)
13:54
<webben_>
hsivonen: harder how?
13:54
<hsivonen>
webben_: AFAICT, wikis don't track the parts you have read, are organized by writer as opposed to reader, don't have good bozo filters, etc.
13:55
<webben_>
hmm.
13:55
<webben_>
seems like there's a space for some sort of hybrid
13:56
<webben_>
where stuff is organized by topic but tracks what you've read.
13:58
<Dashiva>
Kinda like a mailing list with threads
13:58
<webben_>
except threads tend to be very brittle
13:59
<hsivonen>
hmm. I guess I should also update my internal English dictionary do choose better between adjacent and juxtaposed
13:59
<webben_>
e.g. there are multiple threads about longdesc rather than one topic
13:59
<webben_>
and people don't tend to review what's already been said, so there's lots of repetition
14:00
<Dashiva>
Trust me, they don't do that on a wiki either
14:00
webben_
hypothesises that they do it more because it's easier.
14:08
<Philip`>
I think it's more a limit of human ability to understand complex discussions that have been going on for months, and no technology is going to solve the problem
14:10
<Dashiva>
1. See interesting thing. 2. Want to comment. 3. I'm important, gotta comment ASAP! No time to read old posts. 4. Hilarity ensues.
14:12
<webben_>
I think most of the misunderstandings aren't that complex.
14:12
<Philip`>
The misunderstandings make the discussion complex, though
14:13
<webben_>
But a lot of the misunderstandings derive from not having searched and read repetitive previous misunderstandings.
14:13
<jgraham>
webben_: See theHTML pages on the ESW wiki for evidence of htmlwg related wiki faliure
14:14
<webben_>
jgraham: I'd expect the HTML wiki to fail since discussion is happening in multiple places.
14:14
<webben_>
wiki + mailing list === even harder to follow previous thinking.
14:16
<zcorpan>
ie allows -- in comment
14:17
<zcorpan>
i don't want to check for Char anyway so it's possible to create comments that won't serialize, and at that point it's pointless to check for --
14:23
<jgraham>
zcorpan: Sounds reasonable
14:38
<webben_>
hsivonen: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Sep/0233.html : the problem with the real-world lab is that it only tests the UIs that implementors happen to have implemented.
14:39
<webben_>
the real-world lab isn't a good test of what _could_ be implemented
14:39
<hsivonen>
webben_: the real world takes into account all the constraints implementors are under in the real world :-)
14:39
<hsivonen>
webben_: it tests what _would_ be implemented :-)
14:40
<webben_>
I see no reason to believe that.
14:40
<hsivonen>
webben_: so it shows that given the resource allocation constraints implementors have been under for the last decade, the status quo is what we got
14:41
<hsivonen>
webben_: results that are produced under real resource allocation constraints are practically interesting
14:42
<webben_>
you assume that has predictive power.
14:42
<webben_>
I don't.
14:43
<hsivonen>
webben_: my point is that in the case of longdesc, we don't need to *predict*, because we can see the results of a grand experiment that has already run its course
14:43
<webben_>
er... no you still need to predict
14:43
<webben_>
otherwise it would be a meaningless experiment.
14:45
<hsivonen>
webben_: well, I guess you can call it predicting that you'd assume longdesc continues to suck if it has sucked for a decade
14:45
<webben_>
yes, but I think that's an illogical prediction.
14:46
<hsivonen>
webben_: how long would you let longdesc go on and still assume that next year will be different?
14:46
<webben_>
(that is, if longdesc continues to suck, I think it would either be a) a set of historical contingencies or b) because of fundamental flaws. I don't think a particular set of contingencies has predictive power or automatically demonstrates fundamental flaws.
14:47
<webben_>
hsivonen: i don't think time is a relevant factor at all.
14:47
<webben_>
(fwiw implementations do appear to be improving)
14:47
<Dashiva>
Time is the most relevant factor of all
14:47
<hsivonen>
webben_: even if it were contingencies, the result is that it doesn't work
14:47
<webben_>
anything can be made not to work by contigencies.
14:47
<webben_>
that's the nature of contingencies.
14:47
<webben_>
they don't tell you _anything_
14:48
<webben_>
you'd have to actually do a deep analysis of the contingencies to get useful information.
14:48
<hsivonen>
webben_: yes, but here we have a case where we know that a) the feature sucks inherently or b) contingencies *did* actualize
14:48
<hsivonen>
either way, the feature is ruined
14:48
<webben_>
only a) is meaningful if true.
14:48
<hsivonen>
unless you believe you can remove the contingencies and make it soar
14:49
<Dashiva>
You'd think that if the contingencies could be removed, 10 years would be enough
14:49
<webben_>
Dashiva: er... that's 10 years of contigencies
14:49
<hsivonen>
Dashiva: right
14:49
<Dashiva>
webben_: And 10 years that people could use to remove them
14:49
<hsivonen>
webben_: so how do you know they are contingencies instead of permanent constraints?
14:50
<webben_>
Dashiva: you don't "remove" historical contingencies.
14:50
<Dashiva>
webben_: You either do, or they're permanent
14:50
<hsivonen>
webben_: I'd love to define that some ideas would be great if only the stuff from Econ 101 didn't apply
14:50
<webben_>
Dashiva: no they're just happenings.
14:50
<Dashiva>
Either these contingencies can be removed, in which case 10 years have been wasted. Or they can't, in which case longdesc is inherently flawed.
14:51
<webben_>
hsivonen: That would involve an actual analysis of the flaws and whether any of the contigencies were related to their flaws, not just noting that something didn't happen.
14:51
<webben_>
"War got declared, therefore peace doesn't work."
14:52
<Dashiva>
War tends to get fixed in less than ten years
14:53
<hsivonen>
webben_: as far as I can tell, peace doesn't work given the economic incentives of the military-industrial complex
14:53
<jgraham>
Turning this around, what would you describe as good evidence that the long term cost/benefit of a feature does not work
14:54
<Philip`>
So we should give up trying for peace?
14:54
<Dashiva>
No, but we should take the realities into account while trying
14:54
<webben_>
jgraham: Actual analysis of costs/benefits. I don't think "time" is inherently relevant.
14:54
<hsivonen>
Philip`: no, but the structure of the military-industrial complex needs changing
14:55
<jgraham>
webben_: Time is relevant in that it gives us data to compare to our suppositions about the cost/benefits
14:55
<webben_>
jgraham: Time is not data in itself.
14:55
<Dashiva>
If the feature won't be useful for the next century because of contingencies, why spec it now and not in a hundred years?
14:56
<jgraham>
webben_: So? It is a necessary precondition for collecting real-world data
14:56
<webben_>
jgraham: Of course. But here time is being treated as data.
14:56
<hsivonen>
webben_: I'd expect an economist to be able to estimate the net present benefit of working longdesc
14:56
<webben_>
removing any need to actually analyze the data collected
14:56
<webben_>
i.e. why did war break out
14:57
<jgraham>
For longdesc time has shown that people are not that interested in writing them (hardly surprising) and that UAs are not that interested in implementing it (more surprising)
14:57
<jgraham>
It has also shown that when people do try to author it they get it wrong
14:57
<webben_>
jgraham: It's a lot more complex than that.
14:57
<webben_>
firstly, some UAs do implement it and implementations are, if anything, improving.
14:58
<webben_>
second, better authors have long been told to avoid it (unlike with alt).
14:58
<jgraham>
webben_: The first part is surely not that much more complex. People just aren't interested in providing detailed textual descriptions of their images
14:58
<webben_>
third, most images don't benefit much from long descriptions.
14:59
<webben_>
(see "third" above, never mind people not being interested in supporting multiple audiences where they would benefit)
14:59
<jgraham>
webben_: So ignoring everyhing else, it's not even that useful as a feature?
15:00
<webben_>
that doesn't follow.
15:00
<webben_>
"that useful" compared to what?
15:00
<Dashiva>
The alternatives
15:01
<jgraham>
Compared to not having it at all. Especially compared to the authors spending the same time on other acceibility work
15:01
<hsivonen>
webben_: as for "why did the war break out" analogies, can you identify some root thing that needs fixing and that is blocking longdesc like one can identify campaign financing as the first thing that needs fixing before many political problems can be fixed?
15:01
<webben_>
jgraham: the authoring time involved in longdesc is infinitesimal. the authoring time involved in writing text equivalents is substantial.
15:02
<jgraham>
I don't understand your point
15:02
<webben_>
jgraham: i.e. removing longdesc doesn't free up substantial time for doing other accessibility work.
15:03
<jgraham>
It does if you spend the time that you would have spent writing long replacements for images doing something else that is more useful
15:04
<webben_>
jgraham: er... you're confusing long description and longdesc.
15:04
<webben_>
jgraham: long descriptions for images is necessary when it's necessary
15:05
<webben_>
jgraham: removing or keeping longdesc doesn't do anything to change the necessity of long descriptions
15:06
<webben_>
hsivonen: Based on my experiences talking to implementors about HTML features, I'd say the lack of examples of how to implement it in the HTML4 spec was a contributing factor.
15:06
<webben_>
that much, at least, is something HTML5 could fix (if it chooses to keep longdesc at all)
15:06
<Dashiva>
But if longdesc is such a rare use, why does it need a special attribute? Why doesn't a link (potentially with ARIA associations) suffice?
15:07
<webben_>
Dashiva: what ARIA association?
15:07
<Dashiva>
One that fits the bill, the name isn't important
15:08
<jgraham>
webben_: You said it wasn't useful for most images. Therefore if an author spent the time that they would have spent on long descriptions on something else entirely like alt text or table headers or whatever that is likely to have a better payoff.
15:09
<jgraham>
Even if they do spend the time writing long descriptions burying them in an attribute that many UAs don't support seems like a collosal waste of time
15:09
<hsivonen>
webben_: what should HTML5 say about how to implement it?
15:10
<jgraham>
Being invisible it also increases the chance the longdesc will get out of sync with the image and so on
15:10
<jgraham>
Or go 404
15:11
<Dashiva>
Good'ole invisible metadata
15:11
<jgraham>
londesc is the design I would choose if I wanted to minimise the chance of the feature suceeding
15:38
<webben_>
Dashiva: what's the difference between longdesc and this hypothetical ARIA association?
15:39
<Dashiva>
a) the link isn't invisible metadata (unless you make it invisible) and b) it lets accessibility stay in an accessibility spec and c) it avoids any potential confusion-causing overlap between the two
15:40
<hsivonen>
b may not be a great thing
15:40
<Dashiva>
hsivonen: In what way?
15:41
<webben_>
hsivonen: It could give examples such as indicating longdesc presence on hover with a cursor change or focus with an icon overlay; providing access via shortcut keys and/or context menus; and making the action be open a new browsing context with the URI if a different doc; or just moving focus if it's the same doc.
15:41
<webben_>
rather than just saying "oh, btw, you need to provide some sort of mechanism for this"
15:41
<hsivonen>
Dashiva: letting accessibility stay in a accessibility spec takes a bolt-on view to accessibility
15:41
<webben_>
hsivonen: That's not to say it should mandate a particular UI, but that it should give examples.
15:42
<Dashiva>
hsivonen: Well, in this case the accessibility is mapping the image to the link, the link is present to begin with
15:42
<hsivonen>
webben_: do you consider iCab's implementation a successful UI?
15:42
<webben_>
hsivonen: my one concern with iCab is keyboard focus, but then I think iCab has problems with keyboard interaction anyway.
15:43
<webben_>
hsivonen: What do you reckon? Do you reckon it's a bad UI?
15:44
<Dashiva>
Oh, and I forgot d) no attribute means people can't misunderstand and put plain text in it
15:44
<hsivonen>
webben_: making things discoverable only on hover doesn't seem like good UI design to me unless the appearance of the hoverable item otherwise suggests that it can reveal more stuff
15:45
<hsivonen>
the reason why images as links work is that the image itself usually suggests linkness sufficiently
15:45
<webben_>
is it?
15:45
<webben_>
I thought images as link work because people move the cursor round the screen until it shows a hand icon.
15:46
<webben_>
or, alternately, click until something happens
15:46
<Dashiva>
That's not images as links, that's any link
15:46
<webben_>
well, yes.
15:47
<zcorpan_>
<table summary='Layout table: the first cell contains↩ the type of the return value, the second contains a short description'↩ border='0'>
15:47
<zcorpan_>
dom3 core
15:48
<hsivonen>
webben_: I'm pretty sure people don't scan every decorative image for linkness usually but instead try to move the cursor over images whose content suggests linkness
15:48
<hsivonen>
webben_: do you scan every image just in case?
15:49
<webben_>
ditto longdesc presumably.
15:49
<hsivonen>
webben_: how do you suggest longdescness visually?
15:49
<webben_>
hsivonen: diagrams, charts, important photos
15:50
<hsivonen>
webben_: link-looking images have a much higher linkness rate than those have a longdescness rate
15:51
<csarven>
Is there currently even "longdescness"?
15:51
<Lachy>
so what is wrong with this solution then: <a href="longdescription"><img src="chart" alt="whatever"></a>?
15:51
<hsivonen>
csarven: there is but very, very rarely
15:51
<Dashiva>
Some would say it doesn't allow longdesc on link images.
15:51
<Lachy>
that makes it accessible to everyone, has the same discoverability as iCab's longdesc-icon-on-hover
15:51
<webben_>
Lachy: that would presumably suffer from hsivonen's issue.
15:51
<Lachy>
which issue?
15:52
<webben_>
Lachy: if you're going to hover over an image to see if it's a link, you can see if it would have a longdesc at the same time.
15:53
<webben_>
Dashiva: Is there a use-case for long descriptions on link images? I'm not sure that there is.
15:53
<Lachy>
webben_, sure, but people will more easily understand the hand icon than the icon that iCab uses. People know how to click a link and may not expect to check the context menu.
15:54
<zcorpan_>
Lachy: if i click on an image link, i don't expect to come to a page explaining the image
15:54
<Dashiva>
webben_: That's why I said "some would say" :)
15:54
<Dashiva>
I figured it merited mentioning even if I don't agree with it
15:54
<webben_>
this would seem to be something worth working out: what people expect if they click a chart or diagram or big photo.
15:54
Philip`
looks at a product on the Tesco web site, and gets a handy "XML parsing failed: syntax error (Line: 30, Character: 361)" failure
15:55
<Lachy>
also, it's common for charts to link to either larger or more detailed versions, which could be included in a page which also has more explanation
15:55
<webben_>
hmm actually that's a potential problem
15:55
<webben_>
yeah, I guess the usecase for link + longdesc would be
15:56
<Lachy>
zcorpan_, when you click an image link in wikipedia, you get a page with more information about that image (although that info generally isn't optimised for accessibility purposes)
15:56
<webben_>
<a href="chart.jpg"><img src="chart.jpg" longdesc="description.html" title="Chart of stuff"></a>
15:56
<webben_>
oh wait that's need an alt
15:56
<webben_>
<a href="chart.jpg"><img src="chart.jpg" longdesc="description.html" alt="Chart of stuff"></a>
15:56
<csarven>
webben Links (whether they embed an <img> or not) already has a representation and a user can scan the page and figure out what is a link. @longdesc on the other doesn't. It is hidden.
15:57
<webben_>
csarven: ? it's no more hidden than linkiness in iCab or JAWS 10.
15:57
<Lachy>
webben_, for that case, just use <a href="description.html">Mimg src="chart.jpg alt="Chart of stuff"></a> and include the larger version of the chart within description.html
15:57
<zcorpan_>
Lachy: maybe wikipedia is different because all wikipedia does is explain things -- generally i don't expect to come to a page that explains a word when i click on a text link
15:57
<Lachy>
s/Mimg/<img
15:57
<webben_>
Lachy: what if you want to link to the image?
15:57
<webben_>
should HTML5 advise authors not to link directly to images?
15:57
<Lachy>
webben_, for what purpose?
15:57
<zcorpan_>
(unless it's a word i don't know and the link points to wikipedia)
15:58
<Lachy>
webben_, can you describe a case where an author would want to link to both the image itself and a long description?
15:59
<webben_>
if they believed links are easier to use than context menus and wanted to give people easy access to a big image, I guess.
15:59
<zcorpan_>
couldn't the long description contain the image?
16:00
<Lachy>
webben_, that doesn't really answer the question, and the bigger image can be included in description.html
16:00
<webben_>
Lachy: not if you want to allow people to just save the image without using a context menu
16:00
<Lachy>
they still need to use the context menu anyway once they're viewing the image
16:00
<zcorpan_>
if you want both then it seems more understandable to have two links under the image "(large version, description)"
16:01
<webben_>
Lachy: they don't they can use the File menu
16:01
<webben_>
or the save keyboard shortcut
16:02
<Lachy>
webben_, I think that's just a hypothetical situation, and you're ignoring the fact that most users are already familiar with how to save an image within a page
16:02
<webben_>
"most users" ... are they really?
16:02
webben_
would be interested if they are.
16:02
<webben_>
are you saying they're familiar with using context menus to manipulate images?
16:03
<zcorpan_>
some people i know weren't familiar with how to save images but they could figure it out on first try
16:04
<zcorpan_>
but perhaps they were smarter then the average user :)
16:05
<webben_>
or just more ui-canny.
16:05
<Lachy>
webben_, I'm sure you wouldn't doubt that more people would know how to save an image from a context menu than they would access a long description from it
16:06
<webben_>
Lachy: Yep, but I think the learning process involved in both seems much the same.
16:06
<webben_>
it's just that in IE, that isn't a context menu option, and there's no hint the image has a long description.
16:07
<zcorpan_>
you can save every image there is but every image doesn't have a long description
16:07
<webben_>
zcorpan_: that's the point of the hover/focus indicator?
16:07
<Lachy>
perhaps, but saving images is several orders of magnitude more common that accessing a long description, so people are likely to learn and remember it more easiliy than they would with longdesc
16:07
<webben_>
same as with links
16:08
<zcorpan_>
webben_: then the indicator needs to be understandable by average users :)
16:08
<webben_>
zcorpan_: just as with links
16:08
<webben_>
I think iCab's indicator does a reasonable job. could be a bit bigger maybe.
16:08
<zcorpan_>
perhaps a baloon saying "this image has a description - click here to open it in a new tab"
16:09
<webben_>
well, that could interfere with title
16:09
zcorpan_
doesn't know about iCab's indicator
16:09
<Lachy>
regardless of the size of the icon, the icon itself is very meaningless
16:09
<Lachy>
I tested it and if you hadn't told me it was for long descriptions before I saw it, I wouldn't have had a clue
16:10
<zcorpan_>
webben_: why would it?
16:10
<webben_>
Lachy: would you have a clue what a hand icon means before experimenting?
16:10
<Lachy>
and the icon for when an image is a link and has a longdescription is even more confusing
16:10
<webben_>
zcorpan_: what, showing two balloons?
16:10
<zcorpan_>
webben_: yeah
16:10
<zcorpan_>
webben_: or one baloon with two lines
16:10
<Lachy>
the hand icon suggests that I should do something with my hand, and the obvious thing to do is either move the mouse or click it
16:11
<Lachy>
and since it has the index finger extended, that suggests clicking is more likely
16:11
<webben_>
if you're using a mouse yes
16:12
<webben_>
if you're using a touchpad, less so.
16:12
<Lachy>
if I'm using a touch pad, my index finger is still extended in much the same way as depicted in the icon
16:12
<webben_>
but it's not clicking all the time
16:13
<webben_>
(incidentally, my hand looks nothing like that when using a touchpad, but maybe I'm just odd)
16:13
Lachy
thinks this debate is pointless; goes to do something more productive
16:14
<webben_>
zcorpan_: maybe, not sure what that would look like.
16:15
<zcorpan_>
webben_: e.g. a baloon above or under the image and title as a normal tooltip
16:16
<webben_>
could work.
16:17
<webben_>
i'd be a bit scared of it interacting with weird ways with JS-based tooltips
16:17
<webben_>
*in weird ways
16:17
<zcorpan_>
icons in my systray can have both a balloon and a tooltip
16:17
<zcorpan_>
yeah but if you have a js-based tooltip then you could use that instead of longdesc
16:18
<webben_>
unless you're using it to work around limitations of title
16:18
<webben_>
or for some other weird reason
16:21
<webben_>
Dashiva: with (a) longdesc does not exclude also having a link (it just makes the relationship between URI and image programmatically determinable). a link does not exclude being hidden (and thus not accessible to users).
16:22
<Dashiva>
So you'd rather have redundancy?
16:22
<Dashiva>
That's even worse for avoiding link rot
16:23
<webben_>
Dashiva: do you mean specifying the URI twice by "redundancy"?
16:23
<Dashiva>
Yes
16:23
<webben_>
Dashiva: No, I'd rather the URI was specified once.
16:24
<webben_>
but linked to the image in a programmatically determinable way
16:24
<webben_>
I haven't yet seen any ARIA markup that does that for a description that isn't on the same page.
16:24
<webben_>
and the fate of describedby in HTML5 is less than clear anyways
16:25
<Dashiva>
You associate to the link on the same page, and the link associates naturally to the other page
16:25
<webben_>
Dashiva: if it was actually specified like that, then sure.
16:25
<webben_>
i.e. if it was clear to implementors that describedby pointing an a href means that the target page is the description.
16:27
<Dashiva>
Surely it would be clear to the users even without that?
16:27
<webben_>
only if they explored around the page
16:27
<webben_>
not if they navigating by image
16:27
<Dashiva>
They'd get an image which says "I'm described by this here element"
16:27
<Dashiva>
And if that element is a link, following it would be natural wouldn't it?
16:27
<webben_>
oh I see what you mean.
16:28
<webben_>
perhaps, but _if_ that is the natural behavior, why couldn't one specify that for the user agent?
16:28
<webben_>
either it is the natural behavior but wrong in some cases, or you can simply map the URI to the img?
16:28
<Dashiva>
One could, I'm just suggesting it would work without as well
16:28
<webben_>
it would work, perhaps, but less well.
16:29
<Dashiva>
webben_: Ah, but just describedby allows inline descriptions as well
16:29
<Dashiva>
If the element is something else, e.g. a paragraph or table
16:30
<webben_>
yes, i'm only talking about the specific case when describedby points to an element with an href.
16:30
<webben_>
not the general case where describedby points to an element.
16:30
<Dashiva>
And you'd want to put the URI directly in the image then?
16:30
<webben_>
I'm not sure what that means.
16:30
<Dashiva>
In the image elmeent's markup, instead of a separate link
16:30
<webben_>
not necessarily.
16:31
<webben_>
like I said, from my perspective, a link is fine as long as it can be associated programmatically with the image.
16:31
<webben_>
and it would be better if you could spec for UAs to minimize user effort.
16:31
<webben_>
(e.g. by treating the href target as the description)
16:31
<Dashiva>
I think I see three different cases. Link to on-page content, link to off-page content with visible link, link to off-page content with invisible link.
16:32
<Dashiva>
The last one being essentially longdesc
16:32
zcorpan_
defines NodeList in terms of HTML5 "collection"
16:32
<webben_>
or <a href=""> that's hidden.
16:32
<Dashiva>
Exactly
16:33
<Dashiva>
So by using an association, we can get the same effect as longdesc, as well as the other two cases, with only a single attribute
16:34
<webben_>
yeah, I'm not arguing for longdesc intrinsically (although I think its faults have been overstated); I think programmatic association is useful. I'm just saying that we should hone the association as much as possible.
16:34
<webben_>
to make navigation as fast as possible.
16:34
<Dashiva>
That's a good thing.
16:36
<webben_>
Dashiva: Can you see any problem with a UA treating the href target of an element pointed to by describedby as the description, as opposed to the UA presenting the element itself as the description? (in the case where the element does have an href)
16:36
<Dashiva>
If page loading time (or cost) is important, perhaps
16:37
<webben_>
could you elaborate on that?
16:37
<Dashiva>
The user might want to be made aware if the description is a different resource
16:38
<webben_>
Dashiva: it could do that with the UI.
16:38
<webben_>
Dashiva: for example, Firefox or IE could map that uri exactly as they do longdesc
16:38
<webben_>
then JAWS could announce "Long description available" and the user could use their shortcut key to access it.
16:39
<webben_>
(this is assuming Firefox/IE are exposing it (IE8 is), rather than JAWS trying to dig it out of the DOM, however)
16:39
<webben_>
but at any rate that shows the UI that could be created.
16:39
<webben_>
or JAWS could say "same page description available"
16:39
<Dashiva>
Yeah, something like that should work
16:41
<Dashiva>
Do you think UAs would -not- do that, in the case where it was not specified?
16:42
<Dashiva>
It seems like value added then as well
16:42
<webben_>
It's entirely possible they might not. I think relying on UAs to implement things sensibly is over-optimistic.
16:42
<webben_>
if HTML5 assumes something can be inferred it should specify that assumption.
16:43
<hsivonen>
webben_: the spec should indeed have well-defined algorithms for inferences
16:43
<webben_>
especially for this sort of thing, where developer effort is likely to be concentrated on issues like "How the heck do we get our users access to the Microsoft Office Ribbon?"
16:43
<webben_>
(but really, for everything)
16:44
<webben_>
not specifying stuff got HTML4 into a lot of problems
16:46
<Dashiva>
Would this be the same assocation as between a figure and its legend, or is there a semantic difference?
16:49
<webben_>
Dashiva: a legend might just be a title like "Chart of commodity prices" mightn't it?
16:49
<webben_>
rather than (say) a paragraph summarizing the trends + a data table on a separate page
16:51
<Dashiva>
Yeah
17:21
<zcorpan_>
hmm... if i have text/html "<math><x:y>" and then do document.importNode(theMathElement, true) from another html document, should that raise INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR or not?
17:22
<zcorpan_>
or actually, the same question applies to a normal html element <x:y>
17:32
<zcorpan_>
copying a node between two documents should perhaps not do any checking at all if you copy to an html document
17:35
<Dashiva>
As long as it's all DOM nodes being moved around (i.e. no serialization) it seems a bit odd to do error checking
17:37
<csarven>
Does @scope only apply to <th> ?
17:43
<zcorpan_>
Dashiva: yes but the dom does error checking all over the place
17:45
<Dashiva>
zcorpan_: So raise the same exception that would be raised if you attempted to create the element within the destination document?
17:45
<zcorpan_>
Dashiva: the innerHTML getter in xml documents assume that the error checking that the dom does has taken place so not doing it when moving nodes between documents would break innerHTML and render the rest of the error checking useless
17:45
<zcorpan_>
Dashiva: yeah
17:46
<Dashiva>
I suppose that's equally consistent
17:46
<zcorpan_>
Dashiva: i think it only needs to check nodeName for elements and attributes against the Name production
17:46
<zcorpan_>
but i'm not sure
17:46
<hsivonen>
IMO DOM error checking is useless
17:46
<hsivonen>
either it should check *everything* like XOM or nothing
17:46
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: should i check everything?
17:46
<csarven>
Is there any mechanism in HTML 4 or 5 that can be used to scope values locally? Sort of like prefix mappings in RDFa. For instance, when rel="license" is used in HTML 4 it is signifying the relationship between the current document and the destination resource. In this case, it is not about a particular section in the document.
17:46
<hsivonen>
zcorpan_: no, due to compat considerations
17:47
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: yep right
17:47
<Dashiva>
Is it bad that I know the urls to most DOM specs by heart?
17:48
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: i can't really remove the error checking either
17:48
<hsivonen>
zcorpan_: why?
17:48
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: acid3 tests it :)
17:49
<hsivonen>
fun
17:50
<zcorpan_>
i've actually added more checks
17:50
<zcorpan_>
but perhaps i should try to remove checks instead
17:50
<Dashiva>
zcorpan_: It seems document.createElement('a:b') should work. Core3 says to check for the XML 'Name' production, which contains ':' as far as I can see
17:50
<zcorpan_>
Dashiva: yeah
17:51
<Dashiva>
So as you said, importing into a HTML document should work
17:51
<hsivonen>
actually, I revise my all or nothing stance to XML API checking
17:52
<hsivonen>
it also makes sense to check potentially user-entered values (text content, attribute values, perhaps PI data and comments) but not check application programmer-entered data (element and attribute names)
17:53
<hsivonen>
DOM has this exactly backwards, of course
17:53
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: should i check against Char for text etc?
17:54
<hsivonen>
at this point of the API's life, probably not
17:54
<hsivonen>
I really don't know what to do with the DOM
17:54
<webben_>
csarven: Well, HTML5 currently says: "Hyperlinks created with the link element and its rel attribute apply to the whole page. This contrasts with the rel attribute of a and area elements, which indicates the type of a link whose context is given by the link's location within the document."
17:54
<webben_>
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#rel
17:54
<hsivonen>
I'm just ranting in with 20/20 hindsight
17:55
<hsivonen>
checking for Char before serializer would be bad for perf
17:55
<webben_>
csarven: No idea what UA behavior that's supposed to imply in terms of how a is scoped.
17:55
<zcorpan_>
hsivonen: indeed
17:55
<webben_>
csarven: eRDF uses HTML4 #id to scope rel, which (I think) breaks the HTML4 rel semantic.
17:56
<csarven>
True.
17:58
<zcorpan_>
i've added the following checks that weren't in dom3: doctype.publicId match XML publicChar, doctype.systemId not contain both ' and ", pi.target not contain "xml" or colon
17:58
<webben_>
csarven: so I guess you'd still need to use class="licence" with a defined algorithm if you wanted to guarantee correct processing.
18:01
<zcorpan_>
hmm i thought acid3 tested it but i can't find it
18:07
<zcorpan_>
would be nice to remove error checking from the dom
18:08
<zcorpan_>
it would be incompatible with ie's createElement('<div class="test">') though
18:09
<zcorpan_>
but perhaps we can specify that while we're at it
18:10
zcorpan_
comments out the added error checks for now
18:14
<zcorpan_>
what's really sad is that you have to do two checks: once for Name and again for NCName
18:15
<zcorpan_>
and throw different exceptions
18:15
<zcorpan_>
i guess i can eliminate that and just check for NCName
18:16
<zcorpan_>
hmm i'll try to drop attribute nodes too
18:17
<Philip`>
http://www.singaporeair.com/saa/index.jsp - <META NAME="description" CONTENT=<fmt:message key="description" bundle=s"${mr}"/>> - oops
18:18
<Philip`>
(That slightly confusingly results in a ">" being rendered)
19:38
<nate_m>
Is the html5lib patch for lxml compatibility talked about at http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20071113 online anywhere?
19:39
<Philip`>
nate_m: That was a long time ago - lxml ought to work properly in default html5lib now
19:48
<nate_m>
testing with lxml 2.1.1 and html5lib 0.11.1 fails
19:49
<Philip`>
Could you give an example of the code you're running that fails?
19:53
<nate_m>
Yeah, just a minute
19:55
<nate_m>
>>> from lxml import etree
19:55
<nate_m>
>>> import html5lib
19:55
<nate_m>
>>> from html5lib import treebuilders
19:55
<nate_m>
>>> parser = html5lib.HTMLParser(tree=treebuilders.getTreeBuilder('etree', etree))
19:55
<nate_m>
fails
19:55
<jgraham>
nate_m: That's not expected to work anymore
19:56
<jgraham>
Try html5lib.HTMLParser(tree=treebuilders.getTreeBuilder('lxml'))
19:56
<nate_m>
Well I got that from the doc on the code.google.com site
19:57
<nate_m>
but i'll try the other
19:57
<jgraham>
Oh. That's probably my fault
19:58
<nate_m>
You version does work, but i suppose you know that
19:58
<nate_m>
it also seems that parser = html5lib.HTMLParser(treebuilders.getTreeBuilder('etree', lxml.etree)) works too.
20:01
<nate_m>
althought that really not the same as it is setting strict to the result of treebuilder.getTreeBuilder
20:01
<nate_m>
rather than tree
20:02
<jgraham>
We really have to change that API. I wonder how many people would complain
20:03
<jgraham>
(because the strict thing is useless but the tree thing is important)
20:06
<nate_m>
Thanks for the help
20:38
<Lachy>
hey, I started designing a new layout for the various HTML5 tools. http://html5.lachy.id.au/beta/
20:38
<Lachy>
It's still very much a work in progress and nothing is functional yet. But I'm going to try and incorporate many of the tools we have spread across several different sites.
20:48
<webben_>
Lachy: looks handy :)
20:53
<Dashiva>
I see JF still thinks there's an infinite amount of time and resources for accessibility
20:59
<Hixie>
man this longdesc discussion is like the definition of putting the cart before the horse
20:59
<Philip`>
and the horse might not even exist
21:01
<Dashiva>
And the cart is too heavy for any known horse to drag
21:03
<webben_>
Hixie: Can you forsee any problem with speccing describedby where, if describedby pointing to an element with href, the target of the href should be understood as the description, rather than the content of the element?
21:04
<webben_>
because that could be a way of allowing much the same UI as longdesc allows but using an <a href="">
21:05
<webben_>
and it _might_ be possible for UAs to make it backwards compatible with screen readers that support longdesc now.
21:05
<webben_>
while old visual browsers would still at least get the visible link
21:06
<Hixie>
webben_: what problem would it be solving?
21:06
<webben_>
Hixie: programmatic association of description with img.
21:07
<Hixie>
that's not a problem it's a solution
21:07
<jgraham>
So apart from anything else, I don't understand why it is that there is general agreement that only a very few people will ever bother with longdesc but it is being argued that those people will still have visual design constraints that will prevent then putting <a href="longdesc.html">longer description</a> in the figure's caption
21:07
<webben_>
oh, sorry, yes, rapid navigation.
21:07
<Hixie>
rapid navigation of what?
21:07
<Hixie>
i'm confused
21:07
<Hixie>
can you show me a page where there is this problem?
21:07
<webben_>
images
21:08
<webben_>
any page with an image and a description of the image
21:08
<webben_>
(off-page on on-page)
21:08
<webben_>
*or
21:08
<Hixie>
seems like the right solution is for the image to be hidden altogether from the user and for the description to be given inline
21:09
<Hixie>
why taunt the user by letting him know there's an image in the first place?
21:09
<webben_>
they might want to share the image. they might be referred to the image.
21:10
<webben_>
pulling the description inline from elsewhere could really mess up presentation of the page too
21:10
<Hixie>
do you have something more concrete? this seems very hypothetical.
21:10
<webben_>
replacing img with DOM from elsewhere seems rather hypothetical to me.
21:10
<Hixie>
who ever said anything about doing that?
21:10
<Hixie>
give me a url
21:10
<webben_>
what are you saying?
21:10
<Hixie>
and i will explain what i mean
21:10
<Hixie>
with that page as example
21:11
<Hixie>
(the url of a page with an image that is described)
21:11
<webben_>
righto
21:11
<Hixie>
(and described in a way that helps the user more than if the user didn't have access to a description)
21:11
<Hixie>
(it can be a fake demo page if you want)
21:11
<Hixie>
(since finding a real page that fufills those conditions is pretty hard)
21:12
<webben_>
indeed, thanks to people assuming graphics are easier follow
21:18
<webben_>
Hixie: actually the WAI longdesc example does this, since it has an actual link to the description from the same page as the chart: http://www.w3.org/WAI/wcag-curric/sam3-0.htm
21:18
<Hixie>
(wow that's horrific alt="" text)
21:18
<Hixie>
(and in a WAI spec no less)
21:19
<webben_>
the alt text is fine by HTML4's definition.
21:19
<Hixie>
Per HTML5, what is currently in longdesc="" for that page should just be in the alt="".
21:19
<webben_>
you can't put lists in alt
21:19
<Hixie>
so use <object>
21:20
<Hixie>
or, just put the description inline right next to the image, and use alt="", so that all users can benefit
21:20
<Hixie>
and not just those who have images hidden
21:20
<jgraham>
webben_: That longdesc is substantially more useful to me than the chart
21:20
<webben_>
jgraham: Me too. :)
21:20
<jgraham>
So why hide it in an attribute that almost no one can access?
21:20
<Lachy>
jgraham, webben_ agreed. The description helps *everyone*
21:20
<Dashiva>
I imagine many complex images have longdesc that's semantically a table. Which will then apparently need a separate @summary. Oh ho.
21:20
<Hixie>
of the four solutions proposed here -- inline text, alt="", <object> fallback, and longdesc="" -- longdesc is the worst solution here
21:21
<webben_>
jgraham: er... that's not what I'm arguing for is it?
21:21
<Lachy>
don't hide it from me, even if you want to put it on a separate page for design reasons or whatever. Just use a normal link
21:21
<Hixie>
or just put it inline on the page
21:21
<jgraham>
webben_: Er, I'm not paying much attention to be honest
21:21
<jruderman>
"Future browsers or other agents will provide an optional a link to the description file called "graph1.htm"." such optimism
21:21
<Hixie>
five solutions. inline text, <a href="">, alt="", <object> fallback, and longdesc="". longdesc="" is the worst.
21:22
<webben_>
jgraham: I'm talking about programmatic associations between the <a href="graph1.htm" and the img.
21:22
<Hixie>
both for visually impaired users and for everyone else.
21:22
<Lachy>
The 5th and 6th solutions are 5) <a href="desc"><img ...></a> and 6)<img ...> <a href="desc">more information</>
21:22
<jgraham>
<figure>
21:23
<webben_>
jgraham: longdesc happens to do that, but I'm talking about whether describedby could provide the same mechanism without repeating the uri.
21:23
<Lachy>
webben_, I don't understand how you want to use describedby
21:23
<jgraham>
In fact <figure> + <details> could be neat
21:23
<webben_>
Lachy: well in that case, you'd stick an id on the link and refer to it from img with describedby
21:24
<Hixie>
i would personally mark it up as <img src="graph.png" alt=""><p>Ice Cube Tray sales tend to be higher further South, and tend to decline in autumn.</p><details><legend>Data</legend><dl><dt>Far North</dt><dd>Sales were 3, 4, 2, and 1 ice cube trays from...
21:25
<Hixie>
no need to associate the image with the data -- in fact, no need to even show the image at all when the user can't view images
21:25
<Hixie>
it should be redundant with the text, thus alt="".
21:25
Lachy
agrees with Hixie, except s/autumn/spring/
21:25
<Hixie>
the graph doesn't show spring.
21:25
<webben_>
I think the notion that you're going to persuade designers to put massive blocks of text alongside every graph and diagram is optimistic, to say the least.
21:25
<Hixie>
oh
21:25
<Hixie>
i see
21:26
<Hixie>
you're from the upside down part of the planet
21:26
<Lachy>
it doesn't show autumn either. It only shows months
21:26
<webben_>
fighting for links to text equivalents is hard enough
21:26
<Hixie>
webben_: i think the notion that you're going to persuade designiners to put those same massive blocks of text in a different page is even more fantastic.
21:26
<Dashiva>
We need an element to mark up seasons with, so it's clear what hemisphere the author is referring to
21:26
<Philip`>
Dashiva: What if you're on the equator?
21:27
<webben_>
Hixie: Oh, that's not so fantastic.
21:27
<Dashiva>
Philip`: Flip a coin
21:28
<Hixie>
webben_: so far i have the web on my side -- people tend to put information about their graphs inline, and tend not to give external descriptions.
21:28
<Hixie>
(though of course it's much more common for them to not do either)
21:28
<Hixie>
but if the author really wanted to put the text externally he could too
21:28
<webben_>
i've mainly seen people trying to _hide_ equivalents.
21:29
<Hixie>
<p><a href="graph.html"><img src="graph.png" alt="View trends..."></a></p>
21:29
<Hixie>
(with graph.html containing what i wrote above)
21:30
<webben_>
so can the spec say that Long descriptions should either be in <figure> or
21:30
<webben_>
linked via img link?
21:30
<Hixie>
which spec?
21:30
<Hixie>
wai?
21:30
<Hixie>
sure
21:30
<webben_>
HTML5
21:31
<Hixie>
html5 has an entire top-level-section dedicated to how you mark up text
21:31
<Hixie>
section 4
21:31
<Hixie>
i don't really see that we need to repeat it again
21:32
<webben_>
Section 4. is Web Browsers.
21:34
<Hixie>
section 4 is "The elements of HTML"
21:35
<webben_>
oh sorry, looking at the WD not the Editor's Draft.
21:36
<Hixie>
http://whatwg.org/html5 -- everything else is likely to be out of date :-)
21:38
<webben_>
hmm, this does make the image and its equivalent impossible to extract together.
21:40
<webben_>
I guess one could come up with microformats to make them extractable.
21:40
<Hixie>
it's not clear that many users care about extracting them together
21:41
<webben_>
you'd probably need it to facilitate something like Aurora.
21:41
<hober>
besides which, <figure> covers that case, I think
21:41
<webben_>
hober: except when <figure isn't used.
21:42
<webben_>
why isn't figure used for the Carouge coat of arms?
21:44
<webben_>
is the idea that figure can't be main content?
21:44
<webben_>
"which can be moved away from the main flow of the document without affecting the document's meaning." ... I guess so.
21:46
<webben_>
hober: so that won't work for Aurora, where the example is a weather chart which appears to be the main content.
21:46
<webben_>
IIRC.
22:02
<Hixie>
given:
22:02
<Hixie>
<!DOCTYPE html><form><input name=a><input name=item></form>
22:02
<Hixie>
<script> var a = document.forms[0].item(0); w(a.name);
22:02
<Hixie>
</script>
22:03
<Hixie>
s/w/alert/
22:03
<Hixie>
what should the alert say?
22:03
<Hixie>
in IE the alert says "undefined"
22:03
<Hixie>
in every other browser, there is no item() method
22:03
<Hixie>
wtf is IE doing
22:04
<webben_>
that's freaky
22:04
<webben_>
does it do anything right with a?
22:04
<webben_>
e.g. a.tagName ?
22:04
<Hixie>
nope
22:05
<Hixie>
but alert(a) returns HTMLFormElement
22:05
<Hixie>
er
22:05
<Hixie>
HTMLInputElement even
22:05
<webben_>
that's um, extra freaky
22:05
<Hixie>
oh
22:05
<Hixie>
typeof a returns string
22:05
<Hixie>
(!)
22:06
<Hixie>
wtf is IE doing
22:06
<Hixie>
i'm going to ignore IE here
22:06
<jruderman>
it returns the string "HTMLInputElement"? that's not especially useful
22:07
<Hixie>
it's got to be a bug of some kind
22:07
<Lachy>
Hixie, for longdesc to be included, is this all that needs to be provided: 1. Use cases, 2. Evidence that UAs have implemented usable UI, 3. Evidence that authors have begun to use it properly on a significant scale, and 4. Proof that it's better than any of the other solutions for the use cases?
22:07
<hsivonen>
doesn't IE usually dodge these issues and alert "[object]"?
22:07
<Lachy>
did I miss anything?
22:08
<jruderman>
Lachy: i don't expect any of those to exist...
22:08
<Lachy>
jruderman, I realise they don't exist now. But I'm trying to explain in my next email what needs to be provided for longdesc to be considered for inclusion
22:08
<Hixie>
Lachy: we have to go through the same process as everything else, as described in my recent e-mail to public-html, and as given on the whatwg faq
22:09
<Hixie>
Lachy: which starts with establishing what the problem is
22:09
<Hixie>
Lachy: and then considering solutions to that problem
22:10
<Lachy>
ok, I'll rephrase what I have to incorporate that. I'm just trying to make it as clear as possible what they need to provide
22:11
<Hixie>
hsivonen: IE8 changed that, it starts returning actual class names for host objects
22:11
<Hixie>
Lachy: i already did that
22:11
<Hixie>
Lachy: and jf replied (completely missing the point)
22:12
<hsivonen>
Hixie: he didn't recognize "next best" as being part of the definition of opportunity cost
22:12
<hsivonen>
I guess I should clarify tomorrow
22:15
<Hixie>
i was impressed at how completely he failed at actually clearly describing a problem
22:16
<Hixie>
how answer to "Come up with a clear description of the problem that needs to be solved." was SIX paragraphs
22:16
<Hixie>
none of which actually gave a problem description
22:17
<Hixie>
he listed needs and requirements, without actually saying what he was trying to fix
22:17
<Hixie>
and as part of the _problem_ description, he asserted what the best solution was
22:17
<Dashiva>
Sometimes I wonder if there's actually a movement _for_ bolt-on accessibility because that way you're sure it's "real" accessibility and not "just" a side effect of language semantics.
22:18
<Hixie>
maybe
22:18
<Hixie>
my goal is to improve actual end-user accessibility
22:18
<Dashiva>
If said movement exists, they would fight you every step of the way
22:18
<Hixie>
i doubt such a movement is conscious
22:18
<Dashiva>
True
22:19
<Hixie>
but i do think that there are people who have that mindset
22:19
<Hixie>
it's sad, since they are having a net negative effect on global accessibility
22:19
<hober>
classic "road to hell paved with good intentions"...
22:20
<webben_>
Dashiva: Well, there was one fellow in HTML WG arguing to abolish the semantics of ordinary HTML elements and move all semantics to role or CSS or something.
22:21
<webben_>
(because of fears of presentational use of those elements contaminating the meaning)
22:21
<Dashiva>
Isn't that more of an argument to remove default styling?
22:21
<webben_>
it would be _an_ argument for it yes
22:22
<webben_>
I think that may have been an alternative he put forward
22:22
<webben_>
at any rate, the principle is that bolt-on is more reliable
22:23
<webben_>
I don't think JF's arguing that bolt-on is better though.
22:23
<hsivonen>
Cascading Semantic Sheets came up in the RDFa thread as well
22:23
<webben_>
just that design considerations will require bolt-on
22:24
<webben_>
(compare Dojo's "restyling" of widgets - i.e. using div and span - leading (in part) to ARIA
22:24
<Dashiva>
Well, I think there's a significant difference between bolt-on information (e.g. longdesc) and bolt-on associations (e.g. pointing to normally visible content)
22:25
<webben_>
longdesc doesn't have to point to invisible content.
22:25
<Dashiva>
No, but the implication order is switched
22:25
<Dashiva>
To have an association, you need the content to be present in the first place
22:26
<Dashiva>
longdesc puts it in an invisible place, so it's quite possible the content isn't available from other places
22:26
<webben_>
by the information do you mean the URI?
22:26
<webben_>
as opposed to the description?
22:29
<Dashiva>
I'm not sure what you mean
22:30
<webben_>
hmm. I'm not sure what you mean either. :)
22:30
<Dashiva>
Just that the content should not be created for accessiblity purposes
22:31
<webben_>
what content? descriptions?
22:34
<Dashiva>
webben_: All content, descriptions included
22:36
<webben_>
and it should instead be created for what purposes?
22:36
<Dashiva>
For being useful in general
22:37
<webben_>
if useful in general === communicating to human beings, then that would appear to be the same thing.
22:38
<Dashiva>
Yeah, if you assume page authors are angelic beings of perfection
22:39
<webben_>
I thought you were making a statement about what they "should" do.
22:39
<Dashiva>
No, I'm making a statement about what we should hope for
22:40
<Dashiva>
And if we can make regular joes write content for regular joes, and get accessibility included by default, that's a win
22:41
<webben_>
people with disabilities are regular joes.
22:41
<Dashiva>
No, they're regular joes with disabilities
22:42
<Dashiva>
The more special treatment we require for accessiblity, the less we will get (outside of content ruled by certain laws)
22:43
<webben_>
If you're just restating Hixie's point that a language should have as much accessibility-for-free built in, then sure.
22:43
<webben_>
*as much ... as possible
22:43
<Dashiva>
Not just that, but the parts that aren't built-in should be as close as possible
22:44
<Dashiva>
So to get back to the start, stuff that requires _new_ content to be made for accessiblity is bad
22:44
<webben_>
new content?
22:44
<webben_>
like what?
22:44
<Dashiva>
...
22:44
<Dashiva>
Like longdesc, maybe?
22:44
<webben_>
longdesc isn't "content"
22:45
<webben_>
it points to content
22:45
<Dashiva>
Yes
22:45
<webben_>
by content, do you mean "code"?
22:45
<Dashiva>
No, I mean content
22:45
<Dashiva>
By putting longdesc in an invisible attribute, you place the assumption that the content it points to isn't interesting for anyone else
22:45
<webben_>
no you don't
22:46
<webben_>
that's the assumption developers of browsers have made
22:46
<webben_>
(well, some browsers)
22:46
<Dashiva>
If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't want to put it in an attribute, we'd put it in plain view for everyone
22:46
<webben_>
that's not at all obvious ... look at tile
22:46
<webben_>
*title
22:47
<webben_>
or indeed, IE displaying alt as tooltip
22:47
<Dashiva>
A tooltip is special UI
22:47
<webben_>
Dashiva: just as was supposed to exist for longdesc, yes.
22:47
<Dashiva>
You don't need speical UI for a link. We kinda invented those years ago.
22:48
<webben_>
I think that's premised on a single-model view of linking.
22:49
<webben_>
(that's not an unreasonable view of linking, but it's far from the only one)
22:49
<webben_>
it also doesn't really explain why we need a UI for advisory information
22:50
<Dashiva>
Well, turn it around. Why would you take an awesome accessibility resource and put it behind UI that doesn't exist yet? That seems like a very risky proposition.
22:50
<webben_>
Dashiva: Why use any new features?
22:51
<webben_>
all put interoperability at risk
22:51
<Dashiva>
Because when you frame it as accessiblity, you have to be twice as careful
22:51
<webben_>
or browser vendors might misunderstand what it's for?
22:53
<Dashiva>
You could see it as marketing. You get things done a lot easier by saying "You want this (and that way I get it too)" than just "I want this" :)
22:53
<Hixie>
Lachy: it actually _is_ the pipes screen saver (re your blog)
22:53
<webben_>
yeah, I'm not terribly impressed by the universalism school of accessibility marketing.
22:54
<webben_>
tends to lead to lots of effort spent making things work without JS and on old/broken browsers, and less attention to making things work for actual people.
22:54
<webben_>
(not that interoperability isn't a perfectly nice goal in its own right and all)
22:55
<Dashiva>
Take a cat herder view of our mandate, and things start to make sense :)
22:57
<annevk>
geez, >1000 log lines
22:57
<annevk>
longdesc spam?
22:57
<Dashiva>
This channel?
22:57
<Dashiva>
Mostly, yes
22:57
annevk
sighs
22:57
<Dashiva>
zcorpan talked some about dom core
22:58
<Philip`>
There might be some rubbish jokes in the log too
22:58
<webben_>
hixie talked about form and input stuff too
22:58
<annevk>
Philip`, I filter your lines :p
22:59
<Dashiva>
Maybe we need IRC threading
22:59
<annevk>
Philip`, I'll put the trackerlib update on html5
22:59
<Dashiva>
There are experimental bots that do it, I hear
22:59
<csarven>
Or simply #tag a few lines!
22:59
<csarven>
That could let the reader scan the log lines for certain conversations.
23:00
<webben_>
@longdesc bla bla bla :)
23:00
<webben_>
or maybe "re longdesc bla bla bla"
23:00
<Dashiva>
csarven: Just search for \blongdesc\b or \balt\b and you've got your tags ;)
23:00
<csarven>
#readability #irc #logs
23:00
<annevk>
meanwhile, 1 person so far generated a diff with a different context (and maybe more people used it afterwards)
23:01
<csarven>
Dashiva I said "scan"ing the logs, not read every line ;)
23:04
<annevk>
zcorpan, why does getElementsByTagNameNS not throw?
23:09
<annevk>
Philip`, done
23:15
<Philip`>
annevk: You probably want to sanitise the 'source' variable, instead of passing user input directly to the shell via popen
23:16
<annevk>
Philip`, how is source user input?
23:17
<annevk>
hmm, I thought I killed that feature
23:18
<Philip`>
annevk: html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?source=|shell%20code| etc
23:19
<annevk>
killed
23:20
<Philip`>
Thanks :-)
23:21
<annevk>
Hixie, btw, svn log is still being hit; hopefully not intensive enough for it to be a problem, but if that turns out to be a problem as well let me know and I'll start caching that too
23:29
<annevk>
(svn complains about googlecode not having the right certificate)
23:31
<Lachy>
Hixie, do you mean that Google Chrome actually loads and executes the real sspipes.scr, or does it just emulate it somehow?
23:32
<annevk>
it loads and executes the real sspipes.scr
23:32
<annevk>
see blogs
23:33
<Philip`>
Lachy: http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src/chrome/browser/about_internets_status_view.cc
23:34
<Lachy>
oh, cool. that mean it will also get the teapots :-)
23:37
<annevk>
zcorpan, it's complete mystery to me how createElementNS arrives at localName
23:41
<annevk>
zcorpan, getElementById should return the first element matching ID, I think
23:41
<annevk>
zcorpan, not just any
23:41
annevk
thinks zcorpan scans the backlog