[whatwg] Have tabstrip / tab elements been discussed?

[E.J. Zufelt]

On 2010-08-28, at 6:25 PM, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:

> On 28 Aug 2010, at 06:10, E.J. Zufelt wrote:
>> 1. nav is for navigation, but in a web app selecting a tab may nave nothing to do with "navigation", it may have to do with switching UI pages, which could potentially be considered "navigation".
> 
> I can't grok this sentence. You say it may have nothing to do with navigation, but then give an example of navigation. What's an example of a tablist tab that does not switch to (i.e. navigate to) a different tabpage?

I could have been more clear.  I am suggesting that a different tab page would not be "navigation" in the common sense, as the user is not leaving the current page, just switching contexts within the application.  Another example might be where a tabstrip is used informationally, without attached behavior, to indicate perhaps which step of a process a user is currently on.

A list of tabs differs from a list of links, because when selecting a tab the user expects the change to stay within a greater context.  If I am logged into a CMS and viewing a blog article, tabs may be View, Edit, Track Changes, etc.  As a tabstrip I expect these actions to be meaningful within the current context of the article.

> 
>> 2. Unless a list item can receive a selected attribute, then we would still have no method of presenting information about the selected tab through markup alone.  Commonly the selected tab is given a class such as "tab-selected" and this meaning is communicated through style alone.
> 
> So basically you want an HTML5 native equivalent of "aria-selected='true'"?
> 
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria/complete#aria-selected
> 
Yes, as a matter of fact a tabstrip element could contain list items, one of which could be selected.  Tabstrips are essentially a different type of list, and there is currently no method of communicating this in html5.

Thanks,
Everett