[pmwiki-users] Avoiding Headings in the SideBar

H. Fox haganfox at gmail.com
Thu Aug 11 20:22:58 CDT 2005


On 8/11/05, Radu <radu at monicsoft.net> wrote:
> At 06:35 PM 8/11/2005, H. Fox wrote:
> >I don't think using headings in the sidebar is appropriate.
>
> Excuse me, but the semantics they support IS there:

Of course they are.  My point is: they SHOULDN'T be there.

> there are sets of links, grouped under headings, not only:
>
> >  a case of the "using headings to create font
> >effects" in the sidebar.

I completely disagree.  Let me take another shot at explaining it...

If you think the sidebar is part of the document, then why don't you
include the sidebar in your print output?  You don't, do you?  That's
because the SideBar isn't properly a part of the wikipage document --
it's for site navigation.

What I'm trying to get across is: Using headings in the SideBar is
misleading to tools that take advantage of heading structure of pages
for various purposes.  It would be better to achieve the same
appearance with, say

   * pmwiki.org
   ** Cookbook
   **  Skins
   **  PITS (bugs, development)
   **  Mailing Lists

Do you think any of the three outlines I linked truly represents the
structure of the corresponding wikipage document?  Oops.  Maybe now I
see.  The link one should have been:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pmwiki.org%2Fwiki%2FPmWiki%2FDocumentationIndex&outline=1#outlineresult

Does that one look right to you?  Here are the other two:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pmwiki.org%2Fwiki%2FCookbook%2FLightSkin&outline=1#outlineresult

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fqdig.sourceforge.net%2FTips%2FHttpAuthGuide&doctype=Inline&outline=1#outlineresult

IMHO none is correct.  They illustrate that changing from H1 to Hn,
while an improvement, still results in inaccurate representation of
wiki documents' true structure... unless the author prefers to include
the SideBar in the Print View.

Hagan




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