Re: shr - span elements with title attribute, tooltip?

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:23:08 +0200 Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote: 

LMI> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>> It's not difficult.  Just render "[title: content]" instead of "content"
>> when the user asks to toggle the title, and give the user a way to do it
>> locally or globally for the whole buffer.

LMI> It doesn't seem very useful to me.  The common use case for "title" is
LMI> to add a textual explanation for a non-textual rendering element, which
LMI> is why I've implemented it for <IMG>, and nothing else.

It's commonly used for form and a elements and it's required for abbr
and acronym.  Plus it often makes sense for other HTML elements.  So I
think it's useful generally, not just for images.  But even for
images...

>> Tool tips are (arguably) one of the worst UI elements you can use
>> generally, as they are only intended for controls that don't have space
>> for labels (e.g. toolbars).  They require fine control, *a mouse*, and
>> the user to be patient while hovering above something.  There is not
>> even a hint that hovering will reveal a tool tip, you just have to hope.

LMI> Yes.  Which is why people don't put "title" on random textual objects in
LMI> HTML, but virtually only on images.  :-)

...you can't possibly argue that it makes sense for the user to hover
over every image hoping it has a tooltip?  That works for XKCD because
the users have been trained by now to play that joke, but not generally.

As I keep saying, tooltips require a mouse while Emacs runs just fine
without a mouse or graphics.  So let's just provide a way to toggle
titles in the shr buffer, it's a tiny amount of work.  I'll do it if you
don't feel like it--it will be off by default in any case.

Ted