[whatwg] <details> for long description of image/ video etc
Bruce Lawson
brucel at opera.com
Mon Apr 4 00:38:06 PDT 2011
On Sat, 02 Apr 2011 18:40:30 +0100, John Foliot <foliot at wats.ca> wrote:
One of the largest
> problems with longdesc is/was that HTML4 did not clearly articulate how
> user-agents should interact with the attribute (expectations), so
> browsers did nothing. Let's learn from our earlier mistakes.
Tangent, but I think longdesc is reasonably articulated in the HTML4 spec
(given it's not a spec with the same rigour that we now expect):
"This attribute specifies a link to a long description of the image. This
description should supplement the short description provided using the alt
attribute. When the image has an associated image map, this attribute
should provide information about the image map's contents. This is
particularly important for server-side image maps. Since an IMG element
may be within the content of an A element, the user agent's mechanism in
the user interface for accessing the "longdesc" resource of the former
must be different than the mechanism for accessing the href resource of
the latter."
Whatever the reasons behind non-Opera browsers' decision not to implement
longdesc, I don't think that the spec is a major one (but obviously I
don't know as I didn't take those decisions).
It would have been counter-productive to specify "longdesc must be
activated by choosing an option from a contextual menu" because not every
UA has a contextual menu. Or Superwhizzo browser might decide that it
wishes to XHR the longdesc URL in and display it on longclick rather than
the contextual menu.
Tangent end.
--
Hang loose and stay groovy,
Bruce Lawson
Web Evangelist
www.opera.com (work)
www.brucelawson.co.uk (personal)
www.twitter.com/brucel
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