I want to have a comments section in my app that looks like this:
response1
response1a
response1b
response1b1
response2
response2a
response2b
response2c
response2c1
response2c1a
response2c1a1
response2c1a1
response2c1a1a
response2c1a1a1
I believe it's called threaded comments. You've probably seen this format on many online discussion sites such as reddit.
What I'm wondering is how to implement this in the HTML of my app?
What type of html/css combination would make the most sense to allow this type of application-determined indenting?
In your HTML:
<div class="comment">
Response1
<div class="comment">
Response1a
<div class="comment">
Response1a1
</div>
</div>
<div class="comment">
Response1b
</div>
</div>
And in your CSS:
.comment { margin-left: 50px; }
This approach is very flexible and portable. You could also use <ul>/<li> instead of <div> (I guess it's possible to argue both in favour and against seeing threaded comments as semantically equivalent to unordered lists). The inner comment can also be wrapped in another <div> if you require it for additionaly CSS styling.
Update: I (slightly) prefer <div>s over <ul>/<li> because it simplifies your implementation.
Firstly, if you go with the list-based approach, you have to strip the default <li> style that most browsers use (a bullet point and padding). Secondly, you will probably also want to target the set of <ul>/<li>s that are specific to your threaded comments, because they should look different from other list structures. This means that even with the "semantic" approach, you have resort to classes. So in the end, what advantage do you really get, and is it worth the extra hassle?
We've been a little more careful with applying <ul> structures like this in our projects, and so far we're really happy about it. And apparently we're not the only one.
The most used structure is a combination of <ul>s (unordered list) and <li>s (list item). Each post would have a list of comments, for example:
<div id="post">
... (post content here) ...
<ul class="responses">
<li>response1</li>
<li>response2</li>
</ul>
</div>
Then, expanding that idea, each response may have a list of responses as well. These go inside the <li> item.
<div id="post">
... (post content here) ...
<ul class="responses">
<li>
response1
<ul class="responses">
<li>response1a</li>
<li>response1b</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>response2</li>
</ul>
</div>
This approach is fairly lightweight code-wise, and is semantically (the tags used mean the right thing) most appropriate.
To add some css onto that to make it visually appealing, you can do something like this:
ul.responses {
padding-left: 4em;
}
ul.responses li {
border-width: 2px 0;
border-style: solid;
border-color: #ccc;
}
This indents each response list, and adds a small border onto the top and bottom of each response, effectively showing the user that this response contains another list of responses to this response.
Wouldn't embedded lists work? Embedded un-ordered lists with list-style-type turned off would do that effect. Maybe I'm not understanding your question.
ie.
<ul>
<li>response1
<ul>
<li>response1a</li>
<li>response1b
<ul>
<li>response1b1</li>
</ul>
</li>
</li>
</ul>
<ul> and <li> tags
Example:
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<ul>
<li>
comment
<ul>
<li>I comment you
<ul>
<li>oh, and I comment you!</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
another one
<ul>
<li>comment about your</li>
<li>well, another about you</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
I hacked something like that together for ManagedAssembly.com. It's not perfect, but it might give you some ideas.
What you have is a series of nested lists with a given order so a series of nested <OL> elements would make most sense. You have give OL a left margin so that each level of nesting appears more indented than its parent.
Related
I've learned to make the main navigation with a list like that:
<ul>
<li>nav-item</li>
</ul>
Now additionally, I need two top navigations, one left for social buttons and another right for other things. Someone told me better to build those top navigations by 2 like that:
<div>
top-nav-item
</div>
And I'm confused. Why is that better? Could someone tell me the advantage of the second way?
Thank you~
I would recommend using <nav> elements, which is HTML5 spec (see also here). Semantically it fits better with navigational elements, and it might help understand search engines better what elements of your website they are looking at. You can put <a> elements inside the <nav>. A search engine might be able to better understand that those are links to other pages, because that is what anchor elements are made for (linking to other pieces of content).
For how it looks, it doesn't matter; pretty much all elements can be made to look like a menu with buttons. Furthermore, search engines are pretty smart nowadays, and they will probably understand most of your website anyway, even if you don't use the proper elements all the time.
That being said, those elements are there for a reason, so why not use them?
The mozilla developer network's example that I reference above uses the following, but to me personally it does not necessarily always make sense to put everything in a <ul> element.
<nav class="menu">
<ul>
<li>Home</li>
<li>About</li>
<li>Contact</li>
</ul>
</nav>
Why is that better?
It isn't.
HTML is a semantic markup language. It is designed to describe the semantics of your data.
You have a list of links.
The markup should express that it is a list of links not a series of generic blocks with links in them.
I have created example that you want please check below link.
Click on Run.
.nav{float:left;}
.nav li,.social li{float: left;margin-right: 22px;list-style: none;}
.social{float:right;}
<header>
<ul class="nav">
<li>Home</li>
<li>About us</li>
<li>Contact</li>
</ul>
<ul class="social">
<li>Facebook</li>
<li>Google</li>
</ul>
</header>
What can be done to improve the accessibility of a breadcrumb menu similar to:
<ul class="breadcrumbs" aria-label="breadcrumb navigation" role="navigation">
<li>Home</li>
<li>News</li>
<li class="unavailable">#Model.Title</li>
</ul>
Given in this example Home is the site root, News is the first child, and the unavailable class is the current item the /news/article item.
Is there anything that could be done to improve this such as using rel attributes or aria-level attributes?
I would avoid the use of aria-level and use a <ol> element instead. It is best to avoid using aria attributes wherever a native alternative exists. Using aria adds an extra layer of complexity. Simple HTML is far better and already has semantics that are surfaced to AT. This is the first rule of ARIA.
Borrowing from the WAI-ARIA-Practices document, breadcrumbs would look like something like this:
<nav aria-label="Breadcrumb" class="breadcrumb">
<ol>
<li>
<a href="../../">
WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.1
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="../../#aria_ex">
Design Patterns
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="../../#breadcrumb">
Breadcrumb Pattern
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="./index.html" aria-current="page">
Breadcrumb Example
</a>
</li>
</ol>
</nav>
Some notes:
Wrapping the breadcrumbs in a <nav> element lets screen reader users quickly find and jump to the breadcrumbs.
Using <ol> element surfaces an order to screen reader users.
The <ol> should be a child of the <nav>. Some implementations apply role="nav" to the <ol> itself. This is wrong and will override the default <ol> semantics.
aria-current informs screen reader users that this is the current page. If the last breadcrumb for the current page is not a link, the aria-current attribute is optional.
Going from using a screen reader and reading this blog post, the rel attributes won't make a difference to A.T. As for using aria-level, it works if you put it on the anchor tags. I'd also advise wrapping the list in a nav element, for semantic purposes and to save the need of putting a navigation role on the list when you don't need to.
I wound up with this markup for what I think is a not-too-bad breadcrumb. Hide the bullets using CSS (I didn't stop to do that I'm afraid) and I'd say its good.
<nav aria-label="breadcrumb" role="navigation">
<ul>
<li>Home</li>
<li>News</li>
</ul>
</nav>
Hope this helps!
You can use like below
<nav role="navigation" aria-label="breadcrumbs">
<p id="breadcrumblabel">You are here:</p>
<ol id="breadcrumb" aria-labelledby="breadcrumblabel">
<li>Home</li>
<li>Menu1</li>
<li>Menu2</li>
</ol>
</nav>
When searching the Web for a thorough solution on accessible breadcrumbs, #Craig Brett's solution seemed good at first sight. But after reading several sources, aria-level seems to be misused there (besides a W3C Validation problem, see my comment above).
Therefor I like to propose this approach:
<nav aria-labelledby="bc-title" role="navigation">
<h6 id="bc-title" class="vis-off">You are here:</h6>
<a href="~/" aria-labelledby="bc-level-1">
<span id="bc-level-1" class="vis-off">Homepage Website-Title </span>Home
</a>
<a href="~/news" aria-labelledby="bc-level-2">
<span id="bc-level-2" class="vis-off">Level 2: News </span>News
</a>
#Model.Title
</nav>
In this solution we have an HTML5 sectioning element (nav), which should have a heading, and *tada* there it is. Class vis-off signifies an element that is just available to screen readers. With aria-labelledby I'm telling the screen reader to read that headline.
In contrast to Chris' solution, either the <ul> or aria-level is gone.
I'd so or so go for an <ol> if necessary, because the items are in order. Better leaving it out, otherwise it gets very verbose in many screen readers on every page ("List item 1…").
aria-level seems to be misused in the solution above in my understanding. It must be child of a role attribute like f.e. role="list" and that role just signifies not structurally marked-up non-interactive lists.
Maybe a role treeitem might be more appropriate. IMHO it's overkill.
PS: I'm not using BEM notation here to shorten the ids and classes for readability.
I was wondering if putting <div> inside <nav> is considered bad practice, since most of the time I see <nav> used in connection with <ul> and <li> elements.
For example:
<nav id="content" class="box_navi">
<div><img src="img/projekte250.png" alt="Projekte" title="Projekte"/></div>
...
<div><img src="img/shop250.png" alt="Shop" title="Shop"/></div>
</nav>
I understand that <ul> is used to maintain readability of the navigation if css would be disabled (or when printed).
In my case I use images as navigation, so I don't see an advantage in using <li> over <div> also I did not encounter any problems with the way it is now.
Am I missing an important point?
There is great emphasis on correct semantics in HTML.
You are using <nav> because all the elements with in it are for navigation.
There nothing fundamentally wrong with using <div> elements however you should always think about the purpose of each element you using so if you make a (ordered) list of something use <ol> if you use unordered list <ul> and so on.
A lot of website use <ul> because navigation is literally a list of links which makes it correct.
You menu is a list of images so you can use <ul> there too but I don't think you'll have any rendering problems using <div> elements
w3 html validator will tell me that this is wrong:
<a href="http://www.bla.com>
<div>something</div>
<ul>
<li>first</li>
<li>second</li>
</ul>
</a>
in order to get a validated as HTML 4 strict (or just for writing things correctly)
What is the better way to write it:
no div's and ul's - just span's with classes that I need to design:
<a href="http://www.bla.com>
<span class="div">something</span>
<span class="ul">
<span class="li">first</span>
<span class="li">second</span>
</span>
</a>
without <a>
<div id="actAsLink" onclick="javascript:window.open('http://www.bla.com')>
<div>something</div>
<ul>
<li>first</li>
<li>second</li>
</ul>
</div>
=========================
sorry that the code doesn't look at its best - I had troubles handling the "code sampler" on this website.
I vote for option 1: Anchor + descriptive class names:
The link will work, even when JavaScript or pop-ups are disabled. (this is the most important feature to me.)
The class attributes describe their role, as a substitute for the <ul>, <li> elements. These elements can be styled using CSS.
Your structure looks a bit odd though: Why do you want to nest a list in an anchor?
Really you should have <a> tags inside each of the div, ul and li tags:
<div></div>
<ul>
<li>first</li>
<li>second</li>
</ul>
This is valid markup, but obviously with the downside that you have three links instead of one. I'm not sure why you want to have a list inside a link though - it's more common to see a list of links.
As it's valid markup, I have done the following;
<div class="list">
Link 1
Link 2
</div>
My question is, does it have to be written as this;
<ul class="list">
<li>Login to Broker Site</li>
<li>Register</li>
</ul>
what are the + and - of doing one than the other? And are these both correct according to semantic web?
Thanks.
It totally depends on the greater context, but seeing as it seems to be a navigational sub-menu, a ul is indeed the most semantically correct element to use.
The clue is in the class name you chose.
As you see it as a list then use a list. This is a lot more semantic and is helpful for screen readers, which will then treat the contents as a list of links.