#microformats 2013-11-28

2013-11-28 UTC
tantek and odra joined the channel
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odra Hello
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odra Who do I have to talk to to get <a rel="alternate stylesheet"> as a way to switch preferred stylesheets in HTML?
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tantek well those are valid rel values in HTML currently
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tantek what do you want <a rel="alternate stylesheet"> to actually do? It won't display a hyperlink because there's no href
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tantek and btw, welcome odra! :)
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odra tantek: Thanks. :D
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odra tantek: Well, I'd like that <a rel="alternate stylesheet" href="other.css" title="Other Style"> was a way to markup an alternate stylesheet that would preferably get switched on when the link is activated instead of browsers navigating to it.
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odra tantek: As it stands, alternate stylesheets are difficult to use since most browsers don't have support in their GUI to switch them, and to switch them from a page you would need javascript. I'd like to make anchors marked up as alternate stylesheets to become the standard way of working with them.
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tantek odra indeed - I wrote a bookmarklet/favelet >10 years ago to add that functionality to IE5/Mac :)
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tantek (alternate stylesheets chooser)
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tantek see: http://favelets.com/
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odra tantek: Can you tell me how can I make it a proposal? To whoever might make it happen?
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tantek well there's already the suggestion that browser provide a UI for <link rel="alternate stylesheet"> elements but that doesn't seem to have gotten much uptake
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tantek one way to get browser to consider implementing it is to file a bug
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tantek (for each browser that you want to see the feature)
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tantek hmm … looks like that UI feature was in HTML4 but dropped from HTML5
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tantek and delegated to CSSOM
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tantek http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/links.html#the-link-is-an-alternative-stylesheet
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tantek so that means it's probably wide open to request an implementation in browsers
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tantek e.g. here's a bug requesting it in Mozilla / Firefox: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51848 - you could add a comment there in support of it
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tantek oh - odra - have you tried using Firefox and the View > Page Style menu?
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tantek e.g. go here in Firefox: http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/alternatives.en.html
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tantek and then choose the View menu, Page Style > … and pick something from that hierarchical menu
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odra tantek: Yes, but most of the talk on alternate stylesheets are about the <link> element.
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odra tantek: I want to propose using alternate stylesheets with the <a> element which would allow browsers to use the anchor metadata to switch stylesheets.
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tantek but what would that add over using the <link> element with "title" attribute?
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tantek what's the advantage?
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odra tantek: It would allow developers to display the link to the alternate stylesheets in the page contents.
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tantek odra - developers can already do that with javascript
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tantek e.g. using a stylesheet switcher with the DOM/CSSOM
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tantek so the challenge there is to show that there is enough interest in doing so via a JS library that it would be worth the time and effort to add it to the browser itself.
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tantek if not many sites care to put in a little JS for this functionality (e.g. the burden of documenting that is that of the proposer), then it's not worth adding it to a browser
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odra tantek: You could see it in reverse.
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tantek nope - new feature is work, therefore it has the burden of proof/evidence
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odra tantek: That many sites don't add alternate stylesheets because of the burden in doing so.
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odra tantek: Yes, but the thing is alternate stylesheets are already a thing.
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tantek odra - just adding alternate stylesheets is easy
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tantek and you get a UI in the browser *right now*
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tantek see aforementioned View > Page Styles >
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odra tantek: You get a UI in one browser.
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tantek so file bugs against other browser to at least provide that
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odra tantek: That doesn't even appear if you hide the menu bar.
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tantek if you can't convince other browsers to add support for *existing* alternate style sheets, you're unlikely to make progress asking for a *new* feature
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odra tantek: It bothers me that there is already mark up and a micro format for it but browsers still can't infer it what they should do.
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tantek odra - browsers can infer - the simplest path is to just implement a UI like what Firefox does
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tantek you may need to file explicit bugs against Safari, Chrome, and IE to do so. That would be the logical place to start: "Firefox supports standards HTML+CSS alternate stylesheets, so should you"
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odra tantek: That is in <link> not in <a>.
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tantek that's likely your path of least resistance to making progress on this front. take those steps and see if you can make that work - feel free to paste URLs to the bugs you create so others can follow along
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tantek odra - right that's the path of least resistance
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tantek implement what's already defined and specified
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tantek rather than attempting to propose a new feature
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odra tantek: That sounds ridiculously troublesome.
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odra tantek: This is just my opnion but it should be easier to maintain a feature that works with anchors maintained by web developers than to maintain a feature that works with the UI of the browser.
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tantek odra - it's more troublesome to propose a new feature
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tantek so if you think that sounds ridiculous, then you're asking for even more ridiculous
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tantek it's actually less work to put it in the UI of the browser because there is no impact on layout / content
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tantek (and thus compatibility)
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tantek alternatively, you're also welcome to ignore my guidance and simply write a proposal in email and send it to www-style@w3.org
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odra tantek: Yes I'm trying to subscribe to it :)
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tantek also - if you want to refer to this conversation: http://logbot.glob.com.au/?c=freenode%23microformats&s=today#c69947
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odra tantek: I know it sounds quite ridiculous because the browsers haven't yet implemented ANY way of changing the stylesheets, but I like to believe the ways avaiable are in fault.
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odra tantek: For example, even if a developer made an alternate style avaiable through <link>, the user would most likely be unaware of this.
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tantek odra - already answered - if the developer wants to provide an explicit UI in the page - they can already do so via the DOM/CSSOM
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tantek they're welcome to re-use my JS code from my alternate style sheet chooser at http://favelets.com/
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odra tantek: For the user to be aware the developer would have to mention the alternate stylesheet in the page, with javascript and DOM/CSSOM.
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tantek and the developer can do that today if they care to do so
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tantek and if even a dozen developers don't care to do so (challenge you to find a dozen that to), then why should the browsers care to do so themselves?
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odra tantek: But since the developer has to mention it in the page, <a> would be most fitting than <link> to refer to the stylesheet. Which is why I think making the rel="alternate stylesheet" work with <a> is not more ridiculous than making browsers implement the <link> noe
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tantek odra - if you want to enable that use of <a>, then you yourself could develop a JS shim that implements it
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tantek then all you have to do is convince developers that it's worth providing that UI on their site
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odra tantek: I was actually thinking of doing that :u
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odra tantek: I'll see to it this weekend. :)
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tantek then in that case, you're welcome to re-use any of the JS from favelets.com :)
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odra tantek: thanks :D
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tantek wow I wrote this over 12 years ago: http://tantek.com/CSS/Examples/codeisfreespeech.html
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