[whatwg] @Irrelevant [was: Re: Thoughts on HTML 5]

Sat Mar 1 04:05:51 PST 2008

This sounds like a good idea to me.

First off 'irrelevant' is pretty hard to spell for non-native english 
speakers (go sweden!).

Second, the elements are in fact relevant to the page since in all 
likelihood they will be used later. 'ignore' feels like a better 
description since it's weaker. We want to acknowledges the existance of 
the element, but tells you to not pay attention to it.

Though I might be making making the last part up given that I fall into 
the first category :)

/ Jonas

Nicholas C. Zakas wrote:
>  From this thread, it seems like the true purpose of irrelevant is to 
> add to HTML the logical equivalent of display:none in CSS. If that is 
> true, then I'd agree with Jeff that renaming the attribute "ignore" or 
> "omit" is a good idea. Can anyone either confirm or deny the purpose of 
> this attribute as the following description:
> 
> "This attribute is used to indicate part of a document whose content is 
> not considered primary to the page. In visual UAs, elements with this 
> attribute are not rendered; in non-visual UAs, elements with this 
> attribute are not read as part of the normal content flow."
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> -Nicholas
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Jeff Walden <jwalden at MIT.EDU>
> To: Nicholas C. Zakas <html at nczonline.net>
> Cc: James Graham <jg307 at cam.ac.uk>; whatwg at lists.whatwg.org
> Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 11:41:41 AM
> Subject: Re: [whatwg] @Irrelevant [was: Re: Thoughts on HTML 5]
> 
> Nicholas C. Zakas wrote:
>  > If the true purpose of the irrelevant attribute is to aid in
>  > accessibility, then I think the name is completely wrong. The term
>  > "irrelevant" is confusing because, as I stated before, why would anyone
>  > include content in a page that is irrelevant? What you really need is a
>  > way to say "this is relevant only for non-visual UA's". Perhaps a better
>  > attribute name would be "nonvisual"?
> 
> Unnecessarily suggests a particular medium of display; I suggest the 
> shorter alternatives ignore(d) or omit(ted) if you really want the 
> functionality.
> 
> The biggest problem with the attribute is the spec doesn't sufficiently 
> clearly describe the motivation for it; I suggest mentioning the 
> preloading of iframes as such an example (they don't load/render if 
> they're display:none, so it's either visibility:hidden (?) or launching 
> the element into outer space offscreen with position/top/left), perhaps 
> in an informative paragraph.
> 
> Jeff
> 
> 
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