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Re: when acronyms mean nothing

for

From: Holly Marie
Date: Jun 28, 2002 7:44AM

I use Acronyms, and though I have heard that once is enough per page...
a problem exists if you have inside reference links or anchors that
redirect a user or the user skips over introductory content are where
acronym descriptions are first made, on into another area of the page
where the acronyms are not described. I guess this might be a personal
decision about what to do, but I also think about when or where it fails
and how to try and avoid those situations.

What may be better is simply providing the expanded text meaning in
parenthetical display following the Acronym?


Acronym Support across browsers:
IE5.5, Opera5.01, Opera6.01 - hovering acronyms, pops a title box with
the description
Mozz 1.0 - Acronym has a lighter dashed gray underline, hovering the
acronym produces the text description box
NN6.2 has an arrow and question mark on hover, dashed lighter gray
underline, and pops the desciption box on hover.
NN4 does not seem to have user visual support for acronym, no box on
hover.
Lynx does not seem to support acronym.

And then one wonders how readers or devices support the acronym tag?

< acronym > and < abbr >
and sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.
Acronym may be more widely supported so many may use it for both.

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#text-abbr
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#edef-ABBR

holly



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