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RE: SUMMARY: Spelling out acronyms at first mention
Subject:RE: SUMMARY: Spelling out acronyms at first mention From:"John Locke" <mail -at- freelock -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 13 Oct 2000 11:28:48 -0700
Wow. Now that's a tag I haven't run across...
Curtis Ward wrote:
>
> You can also use the <acronym> tag. It will work with text in
> the same way
> the ALt attribute works with an image.
>
Too bad there's no browser standards. I just looked up the tag in the
HomeSite help, and here's what it has to say:
"The <ACRONYM> element specifies that the enclosed text is an acronym (e.g.
'WWW') It is one of the new HTML 4.0 elements (actually a 'hanger-on' from
the ill-fated HTML 3.0 specification) and is currently only supported by
Internet Explorer 4.0.
"<ACRONYM TITLE="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</ACRONYM>
The <ACRONYM> element is ideally targeted at speech synthesis and other
non-visual web browsers, so may not render visually on all browsers.
"<ACRONYM> supports the following attributes:
"TITLE="informational ToolTip"
"The Internet Explorer 4.0 (and above) specific TITLE attribute is used for
informational purposes. For the <ACRONYM> element, the TITLE attribute
should be used to provide the extended definition of the acronym. If
present, the value of the TITLE attribute is presented as a ToolTip when the
users mouse hovers over the <ACRONYM> section.
<snip>
So the bottom line is, if you're developing in HTML Help, and know that all
your clients use IE4 or greater, this tag will do something if your users
can figure it out.
If you're on the web, though, outside the constraints of HTML Help, you'll
have to find other solutions, like opening the term in an external window.
If you can count on Netscape or IE version 3+ browsers, it's fairly easy to
create a short JavaScript to do the trick. Someone already sent a script to
pop open a window. On the popup page containing the definition, you can
capture the window.OnBlur and window.OnClick events, and automatically close
the window when the user clicks anywhere on the screen.
There is also a popup method you can call on the HTML Help ActiveX control,
but it has quite poor performance and you end up repeating the definition on
every page you want it to appear...
