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Re: Title attributes on images and links

for

From: Simius Puer
Date: Aug 6, 2009 4:30AM

>
> > Just as <bold> and <i> were depreciated because they were "style"
> > not "structure
>
> Yes, but opening a link is behavior, not style or structure, so it's
> totally
> irrelevant to the discussion.


...agreed, if you take what I said out of context and ignore the rest of the
sentence the point is irrelevant. The thing is it was part of the whole W3C
movement towards getting developers to stop using code
inappropriately...such as the examples given, and using tables for layout
etc etc


> > the target= was depreciated because you should
> > *not*interfere with the users browser...if they want to open it in a
> > new link they can!
>
> Problem is that most people have no clue as to how to do this.


...a fair point but a subjective one without statistics to back it up.
Sadly without any evidence I'd have to say you could possibly be right, but
have you considered why that might be?

The problem lies in the years of inconsistently in how developers have
approached this issue and Lon referred to this perfectly referring to
Neilsen's comments on "when bad design can become the expected standard".

Look at it another way: should developers go back to the old habit of
"designing for IE", or maybe we should bring back tables for layout? These
practices took years to be accepted as wrong (and sadly some people still
follow them) as so many developers took the easy route. Its easy to argue
this case is different, but I'm sure anyone who supported any of the old bad
practices would have said the same thing.

Could I also bring the focus (no pun intended) back to the fact that this is
a forum for *accessibility*. Putting aside the commercial/general best
practice debate for a moment - opening new windows is *not *considered fully
accessible. See WCAG guideline
3.2<http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#consistent-behavior>;in general and
3.2.5 specifically and the section on "changes in context".

> as for 'forcing' developers to use JavaScript...finding away around a
> > restriction that is there for good reason is the developers fault and was
> > not the intention of the W3C.
>
> That is your opinion, not fact. And I heartily disagree.


...do you mean to say you believe this was the intention of the W3C? Whilst
you could argue that what I said is 'opinion' - I think it is exceptionally
safe to assume that the W3C don't dream up barriers for developers just to
see how they will get around them.

Incidentally, target="_blank" was depreciated in the Strict doctypes *only*.
If opening new windows is a considered a required behavior for your website
then you simply need to use a Transitional doctype. There is absolutely no
need to find a "hack" simply to get your site to validate. In fact it could
be argued that whilst you might be getting "valid" code it is not "correct"
code in the 'spirit' of the doctype you have chosen.

The same goes for WCAG 2.0 compliance where guideline 3.2.5 (Changes of
context <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#context-changedef>; are initiated only
by user request or a mechanism
<http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#mechanismdef>;is available to turn off
such changes) is only required for level AAA.


> because you should *not*interfere with the users browser...if they
> > want to open it in a new link they can!
>
> This is a reasonable argument for making "target='_blank'"
> non-conforming, although I don't entirely buy it.
>
> But do you have a citation that shows this was the /actual/ reason why
> HTML4 made "target='_blank'" non-conforming in Strict HTML, or are you
> just putting forward a rationalization of the decision? I've never found
> a record of the reasoning behind it
>

Sorry Benjamin I can't give you a hard citation ref to check for that
against. I used to have the luxury of being having enough time to be
involved in various W3C discussion groups on as part of a previous job.

The exact reason given for dropping the support for target="_blank" was that
"it breaks the functionality of the back button". It only got applied to
the Strict doctypes as it was recognised that this would cause issues for
many webmasters in the short term.

There are records of most of the W3C discussions if I recall correctly...you
just need some (ok, a lot) patience to find what you are looking for.