At <http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#dfn0> it says
[...] any [...] element that has a non-empty title attribute whose value
exactly equals the term of a dfn element [...] should be presented in
such a
way that the user can jump from the element to the first dfn element
giving
the defining instance of that term.
The word "jump" is a problem. It ignores that the user will typically want to
just have a quick peek at the dfn and immediately get back to where he jumped
*from*. The way it is defined now, UAs will likely implement this without a
"jump back" mechanism. Web publishers will then quickly recognise that their
users are getting lost. The result will be that Web publishers won't use DFN.
The spec needs to indicate to UA developers that users should easily be able
to 'jump' back, instead of just getting lost. This would require too many
words. Thus, I propose to scrap the word "jump" entirely. (After all, a
possible implementation would be tooltips, in which case there is no jumping
at all.)
I'm not sure how to phrase it better. You could mention tooltips, but
obviously a spec shouldn't be that explicit (tooltips aren't even possible in
all environments). The exact implementation should be up to the UA.
Already better would be:
[...] should be presented in such a way that the user can easily access
the
first dfn element giving the defining instance of that term.
I'd prefer something even more explicit, like
[...] should be presented in such a way that the user can easily access
the
first dfn element giving the defining instance of that term, without
risking
the user can't find his way back.
but I'm not entirely happy with this phrasing. I'm thinking of something like
"[...] easily access within the current view of the document [...]" or "[...]
easily access without losing the current position in the document [...]", but
given that the sentence already is so long, I don't see how to cram this in :)
--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>
