>> Hmm, I'd like to voice a big concern for functionality like this, as >> it is invisible to non-JavaScript users... Having JavaScript features >> which do not degrade is bad for impaired users, but it also affects >> search engines and their use. > > This feature has no possible applications for search engines - there > is no reason to index results based upon the letter 'a'. Additionally, > impared users already have tools to help them to search through pages > faster, by keywords - which is something that this helps them to do > (as all the results are already on one page).
Err, I think you're missing my point. There is a rather big usability issue here. Let's define some clear terms: the jQuery method list in the documentation is contained within a single .html "document", which is paged into "virtual pages", using the jQuery pager. To search engines, it looks like a single document. But the net effect of clicking through to the document in the browser, is that you end up on the first virtual page (the '$' items). There is no way to go directly to a later virtual page. Now, if I do a web search for an item which is on one of the later virtual pages, then clicking the search result will still only show me the first virtual page: this does not match my search query and the information retrieval has failed. To make matters worse, I cannot use the browser's own search-in-the-page-feature to find the right virtual page, as this feature only looks for visible DOM elements. This means I must now sift through the virtual pages to find the item I want. If I don't know the exact title or categorization of the item I'm looking for, I'm screwed. Essentially, this is the same problem that exists with Flash (except there, there is no guarantee that the content is even visible to search engines in the first place). The alternative is to disable JavaScript completely, which is not right either. Of course, it is not the end of the world. But it means I cannot easily search for items or paste people the URL to a specific API method. And yes, I do spend a significant amount of my time doing searches: I've got QuickSilver set up to do Google "I'm feeling lucky" searches with "site:domain.com" restrictions for various resources I use (php.net, wikipedia, ...) and it works like a charm. A snappy client-side pager interface is still dead slow compared to having a computer to the searching for me. Steven Wittens _______________________________________________ jQuery mailing list [email protected] http://jquery.com/discuss/
