GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 412661
Gecko.py: determine isUselessObject vs. isLayoutOnly relationship
Last modified: 2007-12-03 19:18:35 UTC
In Gecko.py, isLayoutOnly calls isUselesObject. In retrospect, it seems like the relationship should be the other way around. Furthermore, the isLayoutOnly/isUselessObject stuff is used in making decisions about navigation among objects in HTML content. Joanie mentioned cases where we may actually not want this, but may want to end up on something that's useless and/or layout only. Joanie - can you describe the use case for that please?
I'll have to dig around to find an actual page that exhibits this, but for now: On poorly-coded pages, you sometimes come across a structure like: Bunch of stuff you don't care about Stuff you care about Bunch of other stuff you don't care about And the stuff you care about happens to be inside a layout table -- or is the first bit of content after a layout table. I've also seen where, instead of using headings to indicate new sections, the page creator marked each new section with an unlabeled graphic followed by some text that was bold and in a larger font. In such instances, the most efficient way to get to the stuff you care about is to jump to the "useless" object in question and then arrow down. In other words, the "useless" object becomes a landmark of sorts. I just thought of another example where useless is relative: The silly "x's" that are next to some of the bugs in a bug list in bugzilla. I have no idea what those are for, but they're only next to some bugs so they must mean *something*. What if the user needs to examine all bugs that have those x's? While unlabeled graphics are normally useless, in this scenario they wouldn't be. So.... I don't think this should be a high priority right now given all of the other Firefox stuff that needs doing. But on our radar I think we should have a couple of things: 1. Adding a setting so that the user can define what is useless and/or specify whether or not useless items (as defined by us) should be ignored. 2. Per URL scripts (see bug #404422) should include support for such settings, because what is normally useless might not be on this one particular page (like bugzilla). I hope this helps!
While this is marked "future", I figured I'd ask Mike for his thoughts now so that when I do sit down to work on it, I already know the answers. <smile> 1. Should a user have the ability to optionally include layout tables when using structural navigation to locate tables? 2. Should a user have the ability to optionally include unlabelled graphics, and other objects which lack text (table cells and sections) when navigating the contents of a page? If the answers to both of the above questions is "heck no!", then this bug should be closed out as WONTFIX. If the answers to either or both of the above questions is "yes," how should this ability be made available to the user? Thanks!
My opinion on the above questions is that we shouldn't bother unless the community asks for this functionality. I just don't see the point in ever presenting this information.