From: Ian Hickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Feeedback on <dfn>, <abbr>, and other elements
related to cross-references
To: Calogero Alex Baldacchino <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: WHAT Working Group <[email protected]>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Thu, 27 Nov 2008, Calogero Alex Baldacchino wrote:
Perhaps a silly idea: what if abbreviations could work as an img-map
couple? That is, i.e., an <abbr> without a title could avail of a, let's
say, 'ref' attribute indicating the id of a previous <abbr> element with
a title, and the former could be 'self-closing' (i.e. <abbr ref="#foo"
/>), so by default the UA would substitute it with the referenced
element content (the unexpanded abbreviation), and, at the user will
(when he/she clics on the abbreviation, or just stops the pointer, or
navigates to the abbreviation, or according to any setting in the
browser options) the abbreviation is expanded. (I guess the above won't
be agreed because of backward compatibility, though)
What problem would this solve? It's not like including the abbreviation
each time is a great burden.
Actually, it would solve a problem like this:
What if I style abbr so that the title attribute is shown after the
abbreviation:
abbr[title]:after {
content: " ("attr(title)")";
}
Now obviously I don't need and don't want to do this for every instance of
the abbreviation on the page visually (just the first one on each page would
be enough) , but I do want the title attribute to be expanded for
screenreaders on each instance.
Using this solution would enable the screenreaders to get the title
information from a previous instance, but at the same time would not render
it visually.
Bert
