[whatwg] Suggestion: Replace "move-up" and "move-down" with "move"

[Matthew Thomas]

On 7 Aug, 2004, at 5:01 AM, Edmund Lai wrote:
> ...
> However, by the same reasoning we should worry about the buttons in
> REPEAT. If someone want to have full manipulation on the rows of
> REPEAT, there can be add, remove, moveup, movedown buttons for each
> row. That is a lot of real estates.
> ...

True. That's why I suggested the add and remove buttons have minimal  
"+" and "-" labels respectively  
(<http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2004- 
July/000930.html> #73 and #74). Perhaps the spec could recommend that  
visual UAs default to these values, and that all UAs default to  
title="Add Row" and title="Delete Row" respectively (or equivalent for  
their locale).

Furthermore, perhaps the "move-up" and "move-down" buttons could be  
replaced by a single "move" control. This could appear as a grippy  
(e.g. a square of raised bumps) next to a row, so it could be dragged  
with the mouse to move the row up or down. And on platforms (or in  
accessibility situations) where focusing it was appropriate, it could  
be focused so a row could be moved up or down with the arrow keys.

Sample rendering (magnified):

- - ---- -------------------------.   ,---.   ,---.   o o o o
                                   |  | ___ | | _|_ |  o o o o
                                   |  |     | |  |  |  o o o o
- - -- ---------------------------'   "---"   "---"   o o o o

This would be more direct manipulation than move-up and move-down  
buttons would be. More importantly, if you were wanting to move a row  
more than one place with the mouse, dragging a grippy once would be  
much more convenient than clicking a "Move Up"/"Move Down" button  
several times, since the latter button would annoyingly jump away every  
time you clicked it.

(Another very slight benefit of this change would be that it would  
reduce the possibility of author error, in giving a row a move-up  
button but not a move-down button or vice versa.)

-- 
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/