[whatwg] [WA1] menus

[Ian Hickson]

On Sat, 13 Nov 2004, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>
> Addition to Web Forms 2.0 section "2.3. Changes to existing controls":
> 
> "The presentation of a label should match that of the operating system 
> unless overridden by styling. For example, if selecting a control causes 
> the label to be rendered with a dashed border in the operating system, 
> that should be the default presentation in the user agent.

I added "presentation" to the paragraph that recommended the default 
behaviour to be platform-like.


> "A <label> element should be able to associate with an immediate sibling 
> control element ("sibling association"), so long as no other association 
> exists. The <label> element should first attempt to associate with the 
> next sibling, then the previous sibling. If no immediate sibling control 
> exists, the <label> element will be unassociated.

I'm reluctant to make <label> any harder to implement than it already is. 
Also, one problem with that definition is it starts getting quite 
confusing when you have cases like:

   ...
   <input type="checkbox">
   <label> ... </label>
   <input type="checkbox">
   <label> ... </label>
   <input type="checkbox">
   <label> ... </label>
   <input type="checkbox">
   ...

Sibling association is something I'd rather avoid in general -- I'm not 
particularly fond of it when it comes to the Web Apps menu stuff either. 
(The more I think about it, the less I like the current <menubar> stuff.)


> "An unassociated <label> element has no semantic meaning."

It's a label. It just doesn't label anything. I don't see any reason to 
say that it stops being a label just because it isn't labelling anything.


> It's really annoying to go to a page where they don't associate the 
> labels with their corresponding radio buttons in particular. Sibling 
> association would be a huge benefit when viewing most of those sites.

Do sites really use the <label> element and not associate it, though? I 
mean, sure, they _omit_ the <label> element, but I can't think of any case 
where I've just seen an empty one. Do you have any examples?

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'