45735 - Should not show a tooltip for TABLE SUMMARY

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect, P3)

Description

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

(Not tested; based on comments in bug 27828.)

Currently, a TABLE element has its SUMMARY attribute shown as a tooltip.

However, the HTML 4.01 spec says
<http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/tables.html#adef-summary>:
|
| summary = text [CS] 
|     This attribute provides a summary of the table's purpose and structure for
|     user agents rendering to non-visual media such as speech and Braille.
|
Mozilla renders tables visually (on computer screens and printers), so the 
SUMMARY attribute does not apply.

Therefore we should not display SUMMARY as a tooltip for the TABLE element, just 
as we do not display ALT as a tooltip for the IMG element.

Comment 1

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

The fix is trivial. I'll give a patch if Ian agrees.

Comment 2

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

over to htmlTables...

Comment 3

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

Don't bother karnaze (especially because this is really nothing to do with the 
table code). Please assign this bug to me. If we get a consensus to change the 
spec, I'll fix the bug, otherwise I'll mark it INVALID.

Comment 4

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Doing as Robert requested.  This is absolutely not a tables bug.

Comment 5

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

I disagree with mpt on this bug report.

Three reasons:

1. Supporting "summary" in _some_ way gives the web authors a reason to use that
attribute. This improves the web for non-visual browser users.

2. This attribute *is* useful to our users, if correctly used it allows tables
to be understood without reading them completely (i.e., allows the web author
to provide the reader with a summary of the table, which can be easily reached
but which is not part of the main flow of the page).

3. The spec also says "Make the table summary available to the user" (section
11.2.1 of the HTML4.01 specification).

Robert: I therefore suggest you mark this INVALID.

Comment 6

[Andrew Thompson]

Please now also see bug:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45825

Comment 7

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Response to each of those points:

1.  Leaving SUMMARY as a tooltip could give Web authors a reason *not* to use
    that attribute where otherwise they would (because it is too annoying, when
    shown in Mozilla, for its benefit in other browsers to be worth it). Mozilla
    is not, and should not be, the solution to all the world's Web authoring
    problems (just some of them:-).

2.  If the table is small enough for a whole-table tooltip not to be annoying,
    then it's small enough that the summary will be of very little value to a
    visual browser -- just visually scanning the table and digesting its meaning
    will be quicker than hovering over the table, waiting for the tooltip to
    appear, and reading the tooltip.

3.  The HTML spec says that making `the table summary available to the user' is
    one of the things `user agents MAY carry out when rendering a table' (my
    emphasis). It is not something the user agent MUST (or even SHOULD) do,
    especially since SUMMARY is intended `so that people using NON-VISUAL user
    agents may better understand it' (my emphasis again). (The words `must' and
    `should' appear in various places in that section, but not in the part about
    the summary.)

Comment 8

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

mpt: Web authors have a way out although it's non-obvious. If you put elements 
in the table with a TITLE="" then no tooltip will show up over those elements. 
Not a good solution, I know.

How about a compromise: only show the SUMMARY if the hovered element is a TR, 
TD, or TABLE? So if you hover over table content there'll be no tooltip, but if 
you hover over the table border or unused space in table cells, you get the 
summary.

Comment 9

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Hiding a parent tooltip with TITLE="" is, IMO, a bug not a feature. It encourages 
cruft by enticing authors to specify TITLE="" where it is inappropriate, and may 
also (in some cases) make parent tooltips completely inaccessible.

As for SUMMARY, either show it in the whole table, or not at all. Provided that 
all the current tooltip usability bugs get fixed, I don't really care either way. 
I just want to make sure that Ian's considered this properly, since what he says 
seems to be at variance with the HTML spec.

Comment 10

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

hunh, okay. i still don't understand why it's in this particular component
(whatever), but it's not quite my realm for qa. over to chrisd for qa.

Comment 11

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

[realization: this is in xp apps since it's a tooltip, i presume... afaik, i had
thought that such bugs belong to xp toolkit/widgets. bugzilla fun.]

Comment 12

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

sorry about the noise... i'm handing the qa contact-ship to jrgm, the xp toolkit
qa'er.

Comment 13

[Tim Hill]

I agree.  Look at http://www.w3.org.  The table summary there says "Layout 
table: The first cell contains the body of the page, the second a navigation 
bar"  Not very useful for visual users (although there might be better uses for 
it).  And it makes the page quite annoying.

Comment 14

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

Ok, I concede to the arguments presented above. Lets move "summary" out of the
tooltip code.

Comment 15

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

Attachment: Patch to remove TABLE SUMMARY tooltip

Comment 16

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

I think I'll check this in after nsbeta2 branch. This is not high priority.

Comment 17

[timeless]

Unless you want to go triage all of the bugs we'll get on this when NS6PR2 goes 
to market and people visit bugzilla I (try to) respectfully request that you do 
this before we branch.

Comment 18

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

OK. Ben, can you review/approve? Brendan, can you give mozilla.org approval?

This only changes the Javascript code for tooltip construction, should be low 
risk.

Comment 19

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

I'll a=[e-mail] if Ben gives an r=[e-mail].

/be

Comment 20

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

Putting on [nsbeta2-] radar.  But this bug could be fixed by the net community 
and checked in via approval from brendan or waterson. 
  

Comment 21

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

Hello, Ben?

Comment 22

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

looks good, r=ben!

Comment 23

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

Fix checked in.

Comment 24

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

*** Bug 49826 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 25

[John Morrison]

verified fixed.