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From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Feb 20, 2007 4:20AM

Jukka Korpela
> Making some web content accessible _only_ in RSS format is
> surely discriminating.
>
> The situation is not comparable, though, since RSS has fairly
> stable excuses for a specification, it is widely known and it
> is supported by the modern versions of popular web browsers.

Since the content of the subscription calendar is *sourced* from the web
page (the whole point of Microformats), I would say they are very
comparable situations.

Browsers have taken on some RSS features, but many people select an RSS
feed and open it (automatically) in an external Newsreader application.
I don't see browsers supporting calendars anytime soon, but the
situation / implementation is similar.

Displaying the title on mouseover is unfortunate, given that the content
is aimed at being machine-readable. However, to get a working
implementation within current specs (i.e. not creating new attributes),
is there another option with the same benefits?

I take it there isn't an assistive technology that reads out titles on
<abbr>s then?

> Regarding subscription to the calendar, I don't know anybody who would
want
> to do such things, but my point about it was the very cryptic nature
of the
> subscription link.

People who want to keep upto date with events, and not have to type in
15 events into their own calendar by hand. I've had some good feedback,
partly because you get a higher than normal proportion of Mac users in
the competitive windsurfing community, so quite a few people took
advantage of it.

I think that's one of the main points, with Microformats a central
person (me in this case) types all the events in, and individuals don't
have to. Surely that's a good thing?

I take the point about bad wording, as I said, it's from quite a while
ago and I didn't want people without a suitable calendar application
selecting the link. I will change that soon.

Kind regards,

-Alastair

--
Alastair Campbell | Director of User Experience

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