Re: [whatwg] Proposal for a link attribute to replace a href
I do not know how common the banner link abuse described is; using a table for banner layout is abusive enough to make this an edge case. The immediate remedy would be to transform the source document so as to propagate the anchors downwards, i.e. into each table cell. I am sure the banner server can do that. Chris -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Martin Atkins Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 10:45 PM Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [whatwg] Proposal for a link attribute to replace a href Ian Hickson wrote: This proposal would circumvent A's main limitation which is its requirement to not wrap block-level elements or 'interactive' content. The HTML5 draft requires it wrap 'phrasing content' (essentially paragraphs) and not wrap 'interactive' content (such as other hyperlinks) however I see no reason why a link attribute should require these limits. Links would simply cascade as in the following example: table link=alphabet.html title=Alphabetical List tr tdA/td tdB/td td link=c.html title=More about CC/td tdD/td /tr /table [snip] I don't think that making an entire list into a link is really something that is useful from a usability point of view. I agree that this is an unconvincing example, but consider instead banner ads that are created from a bunch of HTML markup rather than a single image; they generally want the entire banner rectangle to be clickable but make use of tables and all sorts of other strange things. In the wild, I've seen advertisers do two different, undesirable things: some ignore the rules altogether and just put table inside a, which seems to work with some minor quirks in most browsers, or they just attach an onclick event to the root element and let events bubble up to it, where the event handler just navigates to the target page. It could be argued that the quirks you see when nesting table inside a show that implementing a block-level link element is troublesome, but I also consider that if browsers can successfully handle the bubbling of the click and mouseover event up the DOM tree through block elements they ought to be able to do the hit-testing necessary to support mouse-based navigation of a block-level link element. I'm not necessarily arguing for a global link attribute, but it would be useful if the A element's content model were extended to allow all elements so that there's a markup-only way to easily turn an entire block element into a link. This could also be extended to the LABEL element, which in visual user-agents is often interacted with in a way somewhat like a link.
Re: [whatwg] Proposal for a link attribute to replace a href
I agree that this is an unconvincing example, but consider instead banner ads that are created from a bunch of HTML markup rather than a single image; they generally want the entire banner rectangle to be clickable but make use of tables and all sorts of other strange things. I also think, that the banner is not a convincing example. But I step over different kinds of teaser (news- and article-teasers) during my work, that are made out of images, text and headlines. Now, you have to do this (without javascript): div class=teaser a href=link.htmlimg src=image.png/a h3a href=link.htmlnewsteaser/a/h3 pa href=link.htmlText/a/p pa href=link.htmlText/a/p /div If you are good, you also set the a-elements to display: block so that the whole area is clickable, not only the text. It would be *much* more simple/useful to have something like this: div class=teaser href=link.html img src=image.png h3newsteaser/h3 pText/p pText/p /div Or this: a href=link.html div class=teaser img src=image.png h3newsteaser/h3 pText/p pText/p /div /a By the way: It would be more accessible with the mouse in this case, because the clicking-area is much bigger (without css-tricks). best regards frank -- frank hellenkamp | interface designer hasenheide 53 | 10967 berlin +49.30.49 78 20 70 | tel +49.173.70 55 781 | mbl +49.1805.4002.243 912 | fax [EMAIL PROTECTED] | mail http://depagecms.net strnr 14/339/61587
Re: [whatwg] Proposal for a link attribute to replace a href
The anchor customarily encompasses just the key phrase, not the whole text. The problem here is that the advertisements are not cooperative; they aggressively try to get in the reader's way. In your example, it would be more consistent to wrap the header text only. As an alternative, you can put a clickable empty transparency over the teaser. Is that what you meant by CSS tricks? Chris -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Frank Hellenkamp Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 10:23 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [whatwg] Proposal for a link attribute to replace a href I agree that this is an unconvincing example, but consider instead banner ads that are created from a bunch of HTML markup rather than a single image; they generally want the entire banner rectangle to be clickable but make use of tables and all sorts of other strange things. I also think, that the banner is not a convincing example. But I step over different kinds of teaser (news- and article-teasers) during my work, that are made out of images, text and headlines. Now, you have to do this (without javascript): div class=teaser a href=link.htmlimg src=image.png/a h3a href=link.htmlnewsteaser/a/h3 pa href=link.htmlText/a/p pa href=link.htmlText/a/p /div If you are good, you also set the a-elements to display: block so that the whole area is clickable, not only the text. It would be *much* more simple/useful to have something like this: div class=teaser href=link.html img src=image.png h3newsteaser/h3 pText/p pText/p /div Or this: a href=link.html div class=teaser img src=image.png h3newsteaser/h3 pText/p pText/p /div /a By the way: It would be more accessible with the mouse in this case, because the clicking-area is much bigger (without css-tricks). best regards frank
Re: [whatwg] Proposal for a link attribute to replace a href
As an alternative, you can put a clickable empty transparency over the teaser. Is that what you meant by CSS tricks? Chris If you don't know the width and height of the element (because the text may have a differnet height for different teaser) you can't put a clic#kable rectangle over it - the content have to be inside to let the element grow with the content. best regards frank -- frank hellenkamp | interface designer hasenheide 53 | 10967 berlin +49.30.49 78 20 70 | tel +49.173.70 55 781 | mbl +49.1805.4002.243 912 | fax [EMAIL PROTECTED] | mail http://depagecms.net strnr 14/339/61587
Re: [whatwg] Proposal for a link attribute to replace a href
The anchor customarily encompasses just the key phrase, not the whole text. The problem here is that the advertisements are not cooperative; they aggressively try to get in the reader's way. In your example, it would be more consistent to wrap the header text only. As an alternative, you can put a clickable empty transparency over the teaser. Is that what you meant by CSS tricks? Chris The thing is: You want to have it most intuitive for the user: You have a portal page for a newspaper for example. Every article has a teaser with an image, a headline and text. As a user, I don't want to search for a link text (like more..., which is really bad, or some small key phrase), i just want to click somewhere on the teaser (on the image or the text) to get the article I want to read. As a content producer, I have to honor that. It is good to have big clickable buttons, especially on present and upcoming mobile devices (like the iphone for example). In the best case the whole rectangle of the teaser is clickable. At the moment you need some javascript or an a-tag with display: block for it, to get this behavior (see example in my last mail). best regards frank -- frank hellenkamp | interface designer hasenheide 53 | 10967 berlin +49.30.49 78 20 70 | tel +49.173.70 55 781 | mbl +49.1805.4002.243 912 | fax [EMAIL PROTECTED] | mail http://depagecms.net strnr 14/339/61587
Re: [whatwg] Proposal for a link attribute to replace a href
I agree that a more. link is a loss. However, the heading can serve as the anchor all right. If the whole text is in the anchor, it should be styled as a hyperlink, which would make it hard to read. OTOH, drawing a hyperlink border around the table makes the hyperlink hard to discover. Keep the Web consistent. Chris -Original Message- From: Frank Hellenkamp [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 10:59 AM To: Kristof Zelechovski Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [whatwg] Proposal for a link attribute to replace a href The anchor customarily encompasses just the key phrase, not the whole text. The problem here is that the advertisements are not cooperative; they aggressively try to get in the reader's way. In your example, it would be more consistent to wrap the header text only. As an alternative, you can put a clickable empty transparency over the teaser. Is that what you meant by CSS tricks? Chris The thing is: You want to have it most intuitive for the user: You have a portal page for a newspaper for example. Every article has a teaser with an image, a headline and text. As a user, I don't want to search for a link text (like more..., which is really bad, or some small key phrase), i just want to click somewhere on the teaser (on the image or the text) to get the article I want to read. As a content producer, I have to honor that. It is good to have big clickable buttons, especially on present and upcoming mobile devices (like the iphone for example). In the best case the whole rectangle of the teaser is clickable. At the moment you need some javascript or an a-tag with display: block for it, to get this behavior (see example in my last mail). best regards frank -- frank hellenkamp | interface designer hasenheide 53 | 10967 berlin +49.30.49 78 20 70 | tel +49.173.70 55 781 | mbl +49.1805.4002.243 912 | fax [EMAIL PROTECTED] | mail http://depagecms.net strnr 14/339/61587
