Nick, i think your second solution is on the money.
you wrote: "However notice how the first is actually less laborious visually in terms of how we use desktop applications." You can hide the visual display of text labels if you want see: Invisible Form Prompts - http://www.juicystudio.com/invisible-form-prompts.asp for a discussion on methods. with regards Steven Faulkner Web Accessibility Consultant National Information & Library Service (NILS) 454 Glenferrie Road Kooyong Victoria 3144 Phone: (613) 9864 9281 Fax: (613) 9864 9210 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] National Information Library Service A subsidiary of RBS.RVIB.VAF Ltd. Nick Lo <[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ctive.com> cc: Sent by: Subject: Re: [WSG] <select> as form label [EMAIL PROTECTED] group.org 22/10/2004 12:18 PM Please respond to wsg Wow, so many responses... must type fast...just knocked up what must be a better solution: http://www.trikeinteractive.com/form_example.html However notice how the first is actually less laborious visually in terms of how we use desktop applications. I'm thinking of for example OS X Address Book where you select the type of label for items then enter the data for the item. Of course it's really a balance of accessibility which is what I was trying to achieve. Steven your point... > (Start of select menu with 6 items.) > work[Selected.] > (End of select menu.) > [Text.] > > doesn't appear very informative? ...was actually partly because my example had a preselected element. However I'm glad now I accidentally left that in as you demonstrated exactly the reason for having the double label as used in my second solution, so very much appreciated. Darren: > I like the idea...but have a look at it in firefox 1.0 and you'll see > why it probably isn't a good idea. > > each time I click on the dropdown the input box gets the focus, thus > proving v.difficult to actually select something from the dropdown. Hey, whaddya think I'm testing in? IE!! ;-) But yes that was another issue and funnily enough I have another problem that cropped up on that note: The CMS auto-generates forms for the users address(es). So in the users info you could have: General User Info Address 1 Address 2 etc... So if the user has 3 different addresses then it just replicates an address form 3 times and fills in each with the differing data. The problem is however that means there could be 3 lots of <label class="blank" for="input_phone_1"> for example. Now with regards to the functionality of each separate form that makes no difference but it does however completely mess up the accessibility of the form as now that label refers to a field in 3 separate forms. Plenty to think about with all this! Thanks, Nick ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ****************************************************** ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************