[uf-new] Metadata/machine-readable data patterns

[Sarven Capadisli]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 4:50 PM, Nelson Menezes
<flying.mushroom at gmail.com> wrote:
>  <span class="date">March 14th<input type="hidden" value="2008-03-14" /></span>
>
>  Is it hidden data? Yes, but so is the title attribute in an <abbr>
>  tag. This is maybe slightly more "hidden", but I think it's a good
>  compromise.

@title value in <abbr> is not hidden data. The user is able to hover
the element and get to the information. The @title value is used as an
alternative or replacement of <abbr> textContent. This is not the case
in <input type="hidden">.


On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Bob Jonkman <bjonkman at sobac.com> wrote:
> +1 for <input type="hidden">
>
>  Has someone tested this with a screen reader?
>
>  I'm surprised that an <input> is valid without being nested inside a
>  <form>, but pleasantly so.
>
>  This syntax seems no more difficult to parse than <abbr
>  title="something"> and using a standards-compliant attribute to
>  identify hidden text is far better than keeping visible something that
>  is meant only for machines.

It is misleading to think that ISO 8601 is meant only for the machines.

It is important to keep the data paired, a) human readable
date/timestamp within context,  b) human readable standardised
date/timestamp. <abbr> is "good enough" for this or at least the most
semantic candidate with minimal negative impact. Screen readers may
have a problem with it only because of the way they are configured to
treat the data. The information inside <abbr> is independent from how
it will be interpret or treated by any UA for that matter.

e.g. <p>I will see you <abbr title="2008-03-21" class="dtstamp">next
week</abbr></p>

Using <input type="hidden"> on the other hand hides information from
humans and is essentially a very similar case to using meta keywords
(as opposed to human tagging which is far more favoured now).

-Sarven http://www.csarven.ca