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Thread: RE: Skip Navigation
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From: Jukka Korpela
Date: Mon, Jul 22 2002 11:38PM
Subject: RE: Skip Navigation
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John Foliot wrote:
> Even in crummy old HTML3.2 you could go:
> <a href="#content"><img src="spacer.gif" height="1" width="1"></a>
>
> <a name="content>Content here</a>
>
> works in just about everything.....
Except in those situations where it is really needed. :-) But your
forgetting to include an alt attribute was of course just a casual slip.
However, there's a problem with the _optional_ attributes that you included,
height and width. The problem is that some graphic browsers (well, at least
IE with default settings) shrink the alt text to the dimensions specified,
when the image is not displayed (e.g., because automatic image loading has
been turned off). This means in this case that the alt text wouldn't show,
defeating the purpose of a "skip navigation" link in this browsing
situation, and causing confusion. It wouldn't hurt in many other situations
where such a link would be useful, of course.
(Why would anyone need "skip navigation" links if he is using a graphic
browser? Well, to skip navigation and to reach the content proper! Those
links are not _only_ for the blind. For example, a person with perfect
eyesight might suffer from cognitive problems, like difficulties in
recognizing the structure of a page from its visual presentation, including
the separation between "standard navigation" of a site and the content
proper of a page. Actually, I think most of us face such situations, on
sufficiently complex pages.)
Thus, I'd advice against using height and width attributes for links like
this; the only thing you could win is some marginal efficiency, but there's
a lot to be lost. Naturally, this means that the image itself should be a
transparent 1 by 1 pixel GIF. And for reasons associated with popular
graphic browsers, it's perhaps best to include the attribute border="0" into
the <img> tag; no matter how deprecated it is, it is the most effective way
of preventing "normal" people that use "normal" browsers in "normal" mode
from seeing a colored border around the single-pixel image.
Finally, my ceterum censeo: "Skip navigation" links are a workaround, not
the solution. Use them only if you have first considered and rejected (for
some good reasons) structural solutions that do not create the problem that
those links are intended to solve. At the simplest, put "navigational links"
at the _end_ of a page, or use just _one_ contextual link, which points to
an index page, where you can insert all the navigation you want. As a more
complicated approach, put the links at the end _and_ use some CSS that
suggests (using CSS2 positioning) that they be _visually presented_ at the
start of the page.
--
Jukka Korpela, senior adviser
TIEKE Finnish Information Society Development Centre
http://www.tieke.fi
Phone: +358 9 4763 0397 Fax: +358 9 4763 0399
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From: John Foliot - bytown internet
Date: Tue, Jul 23 2002 5:06AM
Subject: RE: Skip Navigation
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Jukka,
You are right of course concerning the image element example I used.
However, it was simply in reply to a comment that the "skip nav" (I really
don't know what to call it - block, method, or ideal perhaps?) only worked
in Internet Explorer. To which I replied that no, using a standard named
anchor (perhaps visually hidden) worked in virtually all browsers, and had
since almost the beginning of HTML time (the GIF89 format, which supported
transparency, was released in, well, 1989). It was a sloppy response banged
out quickly...
While I agree with your assessment that a skip nav block aids all users, my
own experience suggests that it is present primarily for screen reading
technology; for those users who cannot visually "scan" a page quickly and
decide what information they really want. In the commercial world then,
where not all clients are as sensitive to the issues as the other members of
this list are, getting the compromise of a transparent pixel spacer with a
named anchor is a good first step - I would suggest that it is better than
nothing at all, mandated or not. It is both easily implemented and visually
unobtrusive.
I would perhaps disagree with you concerning the structural placement of the
navigation links at the "bottom" of the document and position it at the top
via CSS.
Doesn't it seem reasonable that upon arriving at *any* document the user
would first want to know where they are (via an appropriate <title>) and
where they can go? Any time I go somewhere new I always look for the map
first<grin>. Therefore wouldn't placing the standard navigational "block"
(div) at the bottom of the document force users of screen reading technology
to read the entire document *before* they get to the navigation? And for
those with cognitive disabilities, wouldn't they too benefit with clear
navigational instructions from the onset (both visually and structurally),
consistently placed on every document within any given site?
Just some thoughts...
JF
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