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Thread: DL inside UL navigation
Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)
From: ben morrison
Date: Mon, Aug 01 2005 9:34AM
Subject: DL inside UL navigation
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Ive been given a design from an outside agency that I have to build.
The usual nested list navigation, but with an added twist of the sub
navs having differing amounts of children. Am I just making matters
worse by using a definition list, heres my current code:
<ul>
<li><a href="#">The Project</a></li>
<li><a href="#">The ACP Regions</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Trade Policy Issues</a>
<dl>
<dt>Africa:</dt>
<dd><a href="#">SADC</a></dd>
<dd><a href="#">COMESA</a></dd>
<dd><a href="#">ALL</a></dd>
<dd><a href="#">UEMA</a></dd>
<dd><a href="#">ECOWCAS</a></dd>
<dd><a href="#">CEMAC</a></dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dt>Caribbean:</dt>
<dd><a href="#">CARICOM</a></dd>
<dd><a href="#">OECS</a></dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dt>Pacific:</dt>
<dd><a href="#">PIF</a></dd>
</dl>
</li>
<li><a href="#">Economic Partnership Agreements</a></li>
<li><a href="#">ACP States & Doho Development Round</a></li>
</ul>
How else could i associate SADC, COMESA etc to belong to AFRICA.
Ben.
From: Patrick Lauke
Date: Mon, Aug 01 2005 9:46AM
Subject: RE: DL inside UL navigation
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> ben morrison
> Sent: 01 August 2005 16:35
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: [WebAIM] DL inside UL navigation
>
>
> Ive been given a design from an outside agency that I have to build.
> The usual nested list navigation, but with an added twist of the sub
> navs having differing amounts of children. Am I just making matters
> worse by using a definition list, heres my current code:
It's no a problem as such, but...
> How else could i associate SADC, COMESA etc to belong to AFRICA.
How are you associating AFRICA to belong to Trade Policy Issues, and those
Trade Policy Issues to The project? To follow your rationale through,
you should really mark the whole thing up as nested definition lists, e.g.
(simplified for convenience and clarity):
<dl>
<dt>The project</dt>
<dd>The ACP Regions</dd>
<dd>Trade Policy Issues
<dl>
<dt>Africa:</dt>
<dd>SADC</dd>
</dl>
</dd>
</dl>
I'd say this is one of those (not uncommon) cases where there is no real
solution. Yes, definition lists can be thought as being more explicit in
their hierarchy, but until user agents take advantage of this relationship
(and I believe at this stage none do...but I'd love to stand corrected) it's
in essence just as good as nested, unordered lists.
IMHO of course.
Patrick
___________
Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk
___________
Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
___________
From: ben morrison
Date: Mon, Aug 01 2005 10:06AM
Subject: Re: DL inside UL navigation
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On 8/1/05, Patrick Lauke < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> > How else could i associate SADC, COMESA etc to belong to AFRICA.
>
> How are you associating AFRICA to belong to Trade Policy Issues, and those
> Trade Policy Issues to The project?
I presumed that AFRICA belonged to Trade Policy Issues because it was
nested inside of the <li>.
Is it better to keep to one set of lists instead of changing to a DL
inside a UL?
> To follow your rationale through, you should really mark the whole thing up as nested
> definition lists
Ive never used a DL for navigation before so as long as there are no
drawbacks to this approach that would make sense.
thanks, ben
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Wed, Aug 03 2005 6:00AM
Subject: Re: DL inside UL navigation
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On Mon, 1 Aug 2005, ben morrison wrote:
> Ive been given a design from an outside agency that I have to build.
> The usual nested list navigation, but with an added twist of the sub
> navs having differing amounts of children.
>From the accessibility point of view, the worst problem is in this very
idea. Nested lists are problematic. Think about a blind person listening
to nested lists, with little or no idea of the level of nesting and the
whole construct. Sometimes nested lists have real benefits that outweigh
the problems, but then you need to be extra careful, and especially avoid
more than two levels of nesting.
It is usually better to set up a simple list, with entries that are links
to lists. That way, the user first encounters a simple menu and makes a
choice between a small number of alternatives, then gets the next menu.
> Am I just making matters
> worse by using a definition list,
Yes. You are not presenting any definitions, so definition list markup is
semantically incorrect. (Let's suppress the usual argument over the fact
that the <dl> element's description in HTML specifications is
self-contradictory and just state that partly due to that, the element has
little practical usefulness and is best forgotten, except perhaps for
glossaries and other constructs that are undeniably lists of
term/definition pairs.)
> <li><a href="#">Trade Policy Issues</a>
> <dl>
> <dt>Africa:</dt>
> <dd><a href="#">SADC</a></dd>
> <dd><a href="#">COMESA</a></dd>
> <dd><a href="#">ALL</a></dd>
> <dd><a href="#">UEMA</a></dd>
> <dd><a href="#">ECOWCAS</a></dd>
> <dd><a href="#">CEMAC</a></dd>
> </dl>
If you use nested lists in a context like this, you can write
<li>Trade Policy Issues
<ul>
<li>Africa</li>
<ul>
<li><a ...>SADC</a></li>
...
But before doing so, consider how much the user needs to listen to or to
browse through visually in order to get an idea of what the alternatives
really are. Compare this with a simpler design with simple link lists,
with links pointing to new link lists as needed, perhaps on separate
pages.
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
From: Michael Moore
Date: Tue, Aug 09 2005 11:09AM
Subject: Re: DL inside UL navigation
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Jukka,
Just wondered what you thought about using definition list structure for
FAQ's. - Question/Answer pairs.
Mike
>
> Yes. You are not presenting any definitions, so definition list markup
> is semantically incorrect. (Let's suppress the usual argument over the
> fact that the <dl> element's description in HTML specifications is
> self-contradictory and just state that partly due to that, the element
> has little practical usefulness and is best forgotten, except perhaps
> for glossaries and other constructs that are undeniably lists of
> term/definition pairs.)
>