[whatwg] [HTML5] 3.10.9. The |abbr| element

[Michel Fortin]

Le 1 nov. 2006 à 21:44, Jonathan Worent a écrit :

> I disagree. There is never a guarantee that people will know what  
> an abbreviation stands for, I know what AIDS is but not what it  
> stands for. Also accessing the title information is optional. If  
> the user knows what the abbreviation stands for they won't need to  
> access the title information.

There are plenty of better reasons to omit title. I can think of  
three right know:

What if the author doesn't know what an abbreviation stands for? It  
could be a fictional abbreviation, or it could be an author asking  
his readers for the meaning of this particular abbreviation.

What if the author does not want to disclose the meaning of the  
abbreviation? The meaning could be a question in a quiz.

And what if the abbreviation has two meanings at the same time? For  
instance, how would you markup the first CSS acronym of the second  
paragraph here: <http://people.opera.com/howcome/2002/dvd/index.html>

There are legitimate reasons to not fill up the title attribute of  
<abbr>. Or should <abbr> be disallowed in these situations?


Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://www.michelf.com/