Yes I see your point. But aren't we just back to looking at default behavior? Your describing a particular function of a particular browser that was created and programmed by the developer of that browser, unless I'm mistaken. What, in theory, is the difference by coding to that feature than say, coding to a custom visual feature of IE 4 circa '97?
Extensible means just that, It's up to the coder to determine what, how, and why to extend it. If there are limitations as you described because XYZ browser feature won't work ect, then it's the limits of the current working languages we have. SSML has a 'say-as' or 'interpret-as' which may fill this gap, albeit a long ways away. It appears to me that the other types of rendering such as speech or text-only is caught in the same sad state as the visual browsers were 5 years back. It will probably take that industry a number of years before they become standardized in how they handle data, or have the languages recommendations/standards to work out what is needed and what is not. Again, I think the general concept is for eventually everything to be XML, and interpretation, visual or otherwise, to be decided by the developer. My only point was that now and in the future, you won't be limited. That's not to say you won't have important factors to consider, but you aren't LIMITED by the existing tags. Cheers Ryan Nichols Graphic Design / Web Development Matrixwebs.com 1.800.711.2829 18330 Sutter Blvd. Morgan Hill, CA 95037 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Lauke Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 2:17 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [WSG] Semantics of Breadcrumb "you are here" links > -----Original Message----- > From: Ryan Nichols > Really a browser doesn't understand what any of the tags are. What you > see are only the browsers default behavior at rendering certain items > it's aware of in the DTD. This was all put in by whoever made the > browser, and is totally up to the browser. Default renderings are not > specified in W3C. This is the forward view of browser-to-document > relationships. All these default behaviors can be overridden by > supplying your own rendering rules (css). You missed my point, but maybe it was just me being cryptic. I'm not talking about the *visual rendering* (default or otherwise, which yes of course can be changed to your heart's content via CSS). What I mean by *understand* is that certain elements trigger behaviours that go well beyond the mere visual aspects, and particularly in conjunction with assistive technology etc you need to stick to an established, agreed syntax. An example: let's say I dream up my own custom DTD which defines the elements ARTICLETITLE and ARTICLESTRAPLINE. I define some CSS to make them *visually* render like H1 and H2 would by default. Great, appearance wise it works as it should (in modern browsers anyway). However, if I'm using a screenreader on top of my OS, and - on a page using this custom DTD - I select the outline view (which lists the document structure by looking at the headings), I get back nothing because the browser and screenreader do not *understand* that ARTICLETITLE and ARTICLESTRAPLINE are structural elements that effectively denote headings for sections on the page. The same kind of thing would also apply, of course, to search engines: they would accept your custom elements (heck, they wouldn't care at all of course), but would treat them as they would any other plain text, not adding any extra weighting to anything because it's a title/heading/etc simply because they don't understand the custom elements defined in the DTD. *That's* what I'm going on about. Visually, yes...you can do whatever you want with your own elements. But for them to actually be useful, they need to stick to an agreed syntax whose rules (for all intents and purposes) have been hardcoded into a browser or user agent. Patrick ________________________________ Patrick H. Lauke Webmaster External Relations Division Faraday House University of Salford Greater Manchester M5 4WT Tel: +44 (0) 161 295 4779 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] webteam: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.salford.ac.uk A GREATER MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY ****************************************************** 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 ******************************************************
