Stylesheets - Accessible ABBR/ACRONYM

Author

Accessible ABBR/ACRONYM

ng4rrjanbiah@rediffmail.com

2005-01-28, 7:42 pm

<ABBR title="foo">f</ABBR>

Just consider the situation like the above. If we use such markup,
search engines (tried only Google) don't access the "foo". Is there
anyway to make it accessible for search engines too? TIA

--
<?php echo 'Just another PHP saint'; ?>
Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com Blog: http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com/

Jukka K. Korpela

2005-01-28, 7:42 pm

ng4rrjanbiah@rediffmail.com wrote:

> <ABBR title="foo">f</ABBR>
>
> Just consider the situation like the above. If we use such markup,
> search engines (tried only Google) don't access the "foo". Is there
> anyway to make it accessible for search engines too? TIA

This isn't about CSS but HTML. F'ups set accordingly.

Both <abbr> and <acronym> are rather useless, for several reasons, see
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/abbr.html

Search engines probably don't use content of title attributes much (not to
be confused with <title> elements, which are very important). There's no
reason why they couldn't or shouldn't, but they probably don't. And, after
all, those attributes aren't part of the normal textual content, which is
what really matters to search engines.

The simple way to make the expansion of an attribute accessible to search
engines, and to human beings, is to explain them in normal text. For
example,
.... foo, abbreviated "f", ...
or
.... foo (f) ...

ObCSS: If you use <abbr> or <acronym>, it's best to include at least

@media print { abbr, acronym { border: none; } }

to remove the default bottom border that many browsers draw (and that might
be useful on screen, but hardly on paper), and

abbr, acronym { font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: inherit; }

as a cheap insurance against future browsers that might apply the clueless
"sample style sheet for HTML" contained in the CSS 2.0 specification
(and preserved even in the CSS 2.1 draft, now named as "default style
sheet!").

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Steve Pugh

2005-01-28, 7:42 pm

ng4rrjanbiah@rediffmail.com wrote:

><ABBR title="foo">f</ABBR>
>
>Just consider the situation like the above. If we use such markup,
>search engines (tried only Google) don't access the "foo". Is there
>anyway to make it accessible for search engines too? TIA

If the text is important enough to the page subject that you think
users will be searching for it then maybe the text should be in the
plain content? After all not all browsers support <abbr> (IE doesn't)
and not all browsers support title (and remember that it is intended
for supplementary information rather than essential page content).

A possible solution would be to do something like this
<abbr title="foo">f (foo)</abbr>
with the CSS
abbr span {display:none;}

The redundency of the two 'foo's is a bit annoying and it's possible
to use JavaScript to dynamically convert
<abbr>f (foo)</abbr> to <abbr title="foo">f</abbr> on
page load.

Steve

--
"My theories appal you, my heresies outrage you,
I never answer letters and you don't like my tie." - The Doctor

Steve Pugh <steve@pugh.net> <http://steve.pugh.net/>

R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah

2005-01-30, 7:18 pm

Steve Pugh wrote:
> ng4rrjanbiah@rediffmail.com wrote:
<snip>
> A possible solution would be to do something like this
> <abbr title="foo">f (foo)</abbr>
> with the CSS
> abbr span {display:none;}

This is exactly what I have right now. But, wonder if there is any
elegant hack for this. Also, thinking that it would be much better if
search engines could fix this issue.

--
<?php echo 'Just another PHP saint'; ?>
Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com Blog: http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com/

Steve Pugh

2005-01-30, 7:18 pm

"R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah" <ng4rrjanbiah@rediffmail.com> wrote:
>Steve Pugh wrote:
>
>This is exactly what I have right now. But, wonder if there is any
>elegant hack for this. Also, thinking that it would be much better if
>search engines could fix this issue.

How would you suggest the search engines 'fix' this without also
opening themselves up to spammers who would use <abbr title="lots of
lovely spam">.</abbr> or similar?

As I said originally, if it's worth being indexed as a poosible search
term then its worth putting in the page content for everyone - human
and spider - to read.

Steve

--
"My theories appal you, my heresies outrage you,
I never answer letters and you don't like my tie." - The Doctor

Steve Pugh <steve@pugh.net> <http://steve.pugh.net/>

R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah

2005-01-30, 7:18 pm

Steve Pugh wrote:
> "R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah" <ng4rrjanbiah@rediffmail.com> wrote:
<snip>[color=darkred]
if[color=darkred]
>
> How would you suggest the search engines 'fix' this without also
> opening themselves up to spammers who would use <abbr title="lots of
> lovely spam">.</abbr> or similar?
>
> As I said originally, if it's worth being indexed as a poosible
search
> term then its worth putting in the page content for everyone - human
> and spider - to read.

Agreed. Thanks.

--
<?php echo 'Just another PHP saint'; ?>
Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com Blog: http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com/