[uf-discuss] RFC: sHTML Video Thumbnailing

[Charles Iliya Krempeaux]

Hello Benjamin,

On 5/28/07, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis <bhawkeslewis at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:
>
> > On 5/27/07, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >> I don't think this is a very natural use of the <q> element. A
> >> thumbnail isn't really like a quote of a prose fragment. Consider
> >> that you would never put a thumbnail in quotation marks.
> >
> > True... but you don't have to have the <q> elements put quotes around
> > the thumbnail.
> >
> > Please refer to the following to see how to get rid of it...
> >
> > http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2007-May/009703.html
> >
> >
> > This is similar to the problem we have with using <abbr> for dates.
> >
> > Some browsers put a border under the <abbr> element.
> >
> > We get rid of the bottom border some browser put under the <abbr>
> > element (when we use it for dates) with a little extra inline style.
> >
> > We can do something similar here for the <q> element used for video
> > thumbnails.
>
> Hmm. I think Maciej does have a strong point about interoperability
> here. Removing the quotation punctuation with CSS does not help those
> with user-designated styles or UAs that ignore such CSS: e.g. text
> browsers and screen readers. The question to ask yourself is: if you
> could not remove the quotation punctuation and layout, would you still
> use <q> and <blockquote>? If a screen reader read (for example):

A text browser can NOT see the graphical thumbnail anyways.  It will
see the "alt" text of the thumbnail.  And putting the "alt" text in
quotes seems OK with me.

(It's only the putting the graphical thumbnail in quotes that seems wrong.)

Also... a screen reader is going to read the "alt" text too (instead
of the graphical thumbnail).  So... in this case too, putting the
"alt" text in quotes seems just fine.

So... this seems to be a non-issue.

> quote Dorothy encounters the Lion end quote
>
> That would be rather strange, wouldn't it? As you say above, it is
> "True" that "you would never put a thumbnail in quotation marks." This
> suggests that we should not be using <q> or <blockquote> for this.

Like I pointed out above, any situation (that you mentioned) that
keeps the quotation marks is actually fine doing it, because it will
also be seeing/reading the "alt" text... and NOT doing anything with
the graphical thumbnail.

So it's a non-issue.


See ya

> Maybe it would be better to use something along the lines of:
>
> <span class="video-details"><img class="thumbnail" alt="Dorothy
> encounters the Lion" src="http://example.com/thumbnail.jpg"><cite><a
> href="http://example.com/thevideo" type="video/quicktime">The Wizard of
> Ozz</a></cite></span>
>
> >> If you want the full video to be clickable, what you might want is:
> >>
> >> <a rev="thumbnail" href="http://example.com/video">
> >>    <img src="http://example.com/thumbnail.jpg">
> >> </a>
> >
> > I'm not sure if the "rev" attribute is being used correctly in your markup.
>
> Yeah, the HTML4 spec says the rev and rel imply relationships between
> the current document and the href, not the anchor's contents and the href.
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#adef-rev
>
> --
> Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis


-- 
    Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.

    charles @ reptile.ca
    supercanadian @ gmail.com

    developer weblog: http://ChangeLog.ca/