#top anchor doesn't work in FF

[AGw. (Usenet)]

Scripsit Bernhard Sturm:


The very idea is incorrect. When your page is in German, the dates in its
content should follow whatever conventions you regard as applicable to the
German language.

What you're suggesting isn't correct, either; date format is not
simply determined by language. I believe that German and Italian
could be treated in this way, but I'm not sure about French, and it's
definitely not true for English. Spanish would also be a problem, if
I recall correctly, although it's not of course one of the languages
used by the particular site in question.

 

[Bernhard Sturm]

Scripsit Bernhard Sturm:


It works in typical situations. If you have an untypical situation, you
should find out what works there - if you think that it is important to
be able to get to the start of a page quickly. After all, other sites
don't have the same kind of button as yours, and most of them (wisely)
don't have any "to top" button.

It didn't work on your page where you suggest to use the home button:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/totop.html
Does it work with your browser?

It works for:
- Safari 3.0.3
- IE 6.02
- Opera 9.01
- Lynx

But _not_ in FF 2.0.0.8 and of course never on Apple keyboards where the
'Home' button is missing.
So this is not exactly a valid cross-brower approach to rely solely on
the hope that the UA has implemented this feature.

The very idea is incorrect. When your page is in German, the dates in
its content should follow whatever conventions you regard as applicable
to the German language. The browser settings in a visitor's browser are
irrelevant. Specifically, check what the Accept-Language request header
is for. It is for selecting among different language versions of a page
(when the same content exists in different languages). It is not meant
for mixing, say, Chinese or Arabic or Finnish date notations into the
content of a page in German.

But the page in question is in 4 different languages available (have you
noticed the language selector?). Hence the use of HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE.
But I might drop the concept anyway, as it is not working correctly.

Cheers
Bernhard

 

[Bernhard Sturm]

What you're suggesting isn't correct, either; date format is not
simply determined by language. I believe that German and Italian
could be treated in this way, but I'm not sure about French, and it's
definitely not true for English. Spanish would also be a problem, if
I recall correctly, although it's not of course one of the languages
used by the particular site in question.

you are right: date format is mainly determined by the country and not
by the language as Jukka suggested. That's why you should get different
date formats for the English language version. That was my original
idea, but as stated in another post: it doesn't work satisfyingly
enough, so I drop the entire concept of dynamically offer a correct date
format stamp for all users.

bernhard

 

[Ben C]

you are right: date format is mainly determined by the country and not
by the language as Jukka suggested. That's why you should get different
date formats for the English language version. That was my original
idea, but as stated in another post: it doesn't work satisfyingly
enough, so I drop the entire concept of dynamically offer a correct date
format stamp for all users.

But that's even more confusing. If I'm reading what I think is a US
English page I expect US English date formats and so even though I am
not American I know that "9-11" doesn't mean the 9th of November.

But then there will be other readers blissfully ignorant of the fact
that there are different date formats at all. So inevitably there will
always be some confused readers.

So just use iso-8601. It's the only way out.

 

[Harlan Messinger]

Scripsit Bernhard Sturm:


It works in typical situations.

If you mean the "Home" button on the typical browser toolbar, in typical
situations it takes you to whatever you have set up as your home page,
not to the top of the current page. If you mean the Home key on the
keyboard, the convenience of the "Top" link on a web page is that it
avoids one trip back to the keyboard for someone who is navigating
primarily by mouse. Especially on a page with a lot of sections and a
guide at the top consisting of links to the sections, such as a FAQ
page, a user can find this helpful for bouncing back and forth between
the guide and arbitrary page sections. In that case, the Back button on
the toolbar will work as well, but only if the user went down the page
by using one of the links in the guide; otherwise, he'll wind up on the
previous page.

Of course, the user can keep dragging the scrollbar back to the top, but
that takes more effort.

If you have an untypical situation, you
should find out what works there - if you think that it is important to
be able to get to the start of a page quickly. After all, other sites
don't have the same kind of button as yours,

That's the argument for not replacing a standard widget (such as a
scrollbar or a drop-down list) with one that more or less duplicates its
core functionality but looks or behaves differently from the standard
one: it can be confusing. In this case, there's no potential for
confusion. A user sees a link reading "Top" or "Back to Top", perhaps
with a graphic upward arrow and, by virtue of being literate, knows
instantly what it means, regardless of the details of its appearance; or
else the user doesn't notice it, but in that case the presence of the
link doesn't hinder the user from returning to the top of the page using
the usual built-in means.

 

[dorayme]

It didn't work on your page where you suggest to use the home button:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/totop.html
Does it work with your browser?

It works for:
- Safari 3.0.3
- IE 6.02
- Opera 9.01
- Lynx

But _not_ in FF 2.0.0.8 and of course never on Apple keyboards where the
'Home' button is missing.

Many Apple keyboards have the Home key. Also the useful page up
and down keys and the arrows for scrolling. And the Home button
*does* work in FF 2.0.0.8 on a Mac

I used to put in some go to top links in pages about have given
up. A part from the pretty good arguments of JK, one of the
reasons that impressed me that it was a bit hopeless, was that
there is no end to the demands for this sort of thing:

(1) In general, when do you stop duplicating broswer functions

(2) When do you stop putting to top links on one long page. At
the bottom seems a bit miserly, user might well want to go to the
top before getting to the end. So... where? Every possible
screenful? Bah!

But just purely for interest here, a more sensible way perhaps,
if you must have an aid in a very long doc, how about a 100% page
high longitudinal link. A vertical continuous bar that is a
"magic ladder" up to the top. It runs down the whole side of the
page. All sorts of ways to do this...