On Jan 13, 2007, at 1:19 PM, Scott Reynen wrote:
On Jan 13, 2007, at 8:47 AM, Mike Schinkel wrote:
It really makes more sense to look at the use-case rather than to
issue a
blanket edit of prohibition.
It does. My answers were addressing only the ~80% use cases we're
seeking to cover here. For anything involving the other ~20%, I
continue to recommend RDF as a good solution for hidden data. I
hope no one will restrict themselves to microformats as a blanket
solution to all data markup problems, as that's not what
microformats are intended to be.
Peace,
Scott
I tend to include myself in the camp of those who can't seem to
reconcile this POV with my other notions of good web development
practices.
I can't argue that in some cases other data methods might be more
appropriate, or that there are dangers in maintaining "hidden"
information but each time this discussion has surfaced I'm left with
the feeling that the party line around these parts brush off three
things: the amount of data we're already "hiding" by other means, the
ability of technology to bypass the issue of not updating hidden
information and some of the core strengths of web techs (css, js).
On the first issue I don't see a huge gap between the "harmfulness"
of display:none vs. data being included in HTML attributes that also
don't get seen by huge numbers of visitors... rel XFN values, title
attributes or alt attributes used in cases like FN derived from photo
alt.
In my own experience I have seen countless more cases of ALT
attribute content being missed [either not changed with the photo
change or good values being replaced with junk] when an image gets
changed then I could ever imagine seeing in a microformats data case.
But I would be the last person to suggest that ALT attributes are
considered harmful on today's web.
In sort-of-but-not opposition to that notion, I think that there are
many, many cases where content is generated not by hand but from some
bigger content generation system thus throwing any maintenance issues
out the window. Be it user data generated from the system, event
data, or any other automated data there is little impact on the
quality of information by the presentation of that same information.
At least insofar as not being included in the HTML at all vs.
including it but using display:none [the discussion of user behavior
and their willingness to update a field in their profile that they
never 'see' anywhere is, i would expect, the same for both cases].
Additionally, in cases of rudimentary systems like static includes
the ability to use CSS to hide the information in some of the
situations the data is used I would think would be preferred over
having to manage multiple include blocks - one for each desired
presentation.
Which leads me to my last issue, and one that I think is the one i
struggle most with when thinking about how to do web dev the "right"
way. Clearly good data in title and rel attributes is 'right', as is
using markup in ways that would get you into the alt attribute cases.
But it is hard for me to reconcile the use of previous web
development methods [separation of content and presentation &
progressive enhancement] with the camp that takes a hard line on
hidden elements being harmful.
There are little cases like the ways in which elements may be
manipulated in techniques like image replacement or accessible
scripting techniques... On some level we do things like "hide" much
more important informations like navigation day in and day out.
Then there are other cases like multiple media types, alternate style
sheets and similar cases which I just don't see how they square with
the "hidden elements considered harmful" sentiment.
Outside of the extreme CSS Zen Garden cases, or the mostly impossible
& impractical site redesign by changing /only/ the CSS holy grails,
there are still cases where it would be more 'proper' to leverage CSS
then it would be to edit the HTML or HTML generation code. Message
board applications with different user selected skins that present
content a bit differently (Vanilla), Blog themes, community sites
where users edit their profile presentation via CSS... all cases
where CSS usage in this way would be seen as leveraging the strengths
of the technology.
--
[ Chris Casciano ]
[ [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] [ http://placenamehere.com ]
_______________________________________________
microformats-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
