[whatwg] Suggestion: New "input-redirect" CSS property.

[Matthew Thomas]

On 27 Aug, 2004, at 3:34 PM, Sander wrote:
> ...
> I'm happy enough with the current proposal, but in the past I have 
> purposefully used label to take benefit of the focus transfer (though 
> it was also the semantically right thing to do). Specifically, I had 
> to deal with a design (which was a given - I had no power to change 
> it) with a "subscribe" input (email) with a header/label sitting 
> directly underneath a column of navigational links. This header and 
> the navigational links were styled nearly identical. The navigational 
> links
> were of course meant to be clicked - but the header for the 
> subscription box wasn't? So it became a label. It still sucks, as the 
> visibility of the cursor isn't very high,

So this isn't just a bad design, but a design you knew was bad 
beforehand, one which could have been fixed by a single line of CSS 
(and/or a single-line onclick handler).

>> I don't see why. The reason to use <label> has nothing to do with 
>> focus passing, it has to do with semantic markup, aiding 
>> accessibility tools, and so forth.
>
> Focus passing is probably the _one_ 'reason' which has any effect at 
> all to convince the many clueless authors out there to start using 
> labels.

That's why, as I said earlier, UAs should style <label> with the same 
typeface as native UI labels by default. That would be more obviously 
label-like than non-native focus behavior.

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