[whatwg] Have tabstrip / tab elements been discussed?

[E.J. Zufelt]

On 2010-08-28, at 7:00 PM, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:

> 
> On 28 Aug 2010, at 23:39, E.J. Zufelt wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> But the draft is explicit that links in a "nav" element might only switch contexts within the current page:
> 
> "The nav element represents a section of a page that links to other pages or to parts within the page"
> 
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/sections.html#the-nav-element
> 
> It's not idiosyncratic to call tabpage-switching "navigation". Here's an example from the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library:
> 
> http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/navigation/tabs/moduletabs.html
> 
I believe that there is a cognitive difference between a list of navigation links, a list of controls that make up a "menu" and a list of controls that make up a tablist (to borrow terminology from ARIA).  A web application, for example, may be on a page with header and footer navigation, and the application itself may have a menu system and make use of a tablist.  These different lists of components are so frequently styled differently than one another that it is easy to infer a difference in meaning that is being communicated.  A menu may have items to save, restore, get help, change program settings.  A tabstrip may allow a user to switch between several currently open documents.

Thanks,
Everett