w3c validation and yui widgets

[jflesher]

I re-writing a 2.x YUI Tooltip widget and decided to rethink how I have end users pass in parameters; let me explain; I have an anchor tag (link <a...) and I want an image to show up under and a sound byte to play, if JavaScript is enabled, other wise it will just be an ordinary link; in order to do this I have know what the image and sound URL is; now it comes down to this; if I hide the information in the href tag using hash (#) so I can parse it out later, the link will still work, even though its not correct; but how will this effect my SEO for that link?

I have other options; like put it in a rel or rev tag; but my question is how will google look at this? Do they even look at rel or rev tags any more?

Obviously I want to have Tooltips of div's and other tags, so where do I hide this information in them? I use to use the style="content: this_parameter|equals_this", once Opera started rendering the content and not just the before and after, so I had to normalize every tag if the browser was Opera; but this technique works for all tags; so it seemed like the best one to use, overall; it validates also; but is this the best way to do this?

Widget designers need to look at this subject with more knowledge of how the SEO is affected by this decision; the new Gallery Accordion Widget for YUI 3.x uses a custom tag <div yuiConfig="{...}", this coming from a crowd of best practices programmers shocked me; this will not validate; so I call them on the carpet see YUI Library :: Forums :: View topic - Best practise for hiding variables in HTML tags and they come back with "In general we discourage the use of custom elements and attributes.", in all fairness, they are right, and it was just the brilliant work of one man that bit the bullet to try to make it easier for the end user to use this widget; but at the cost of it not passing validation.

The best practice would be to write the parameters in a javascript; i.e.; <a id="a1" ...; and at the bottom of the page in a <script tag I would have something like: id:a1, image=url...; you get the picture; the link is somewhere in your html code and your parameters are in a script at the bottom of the page. Not to mention that some systems (CMS) will not allow you to post scripts; so what do we do now? Forget best practise and hide the parameter in an obscure tag and hope it doesn't effect SEO and validation.

After looking at the HTML 5 standard, I decided it is by far the best way to accomplish this http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overvie...data-attribute, such that my Tooltip will look something like this: <a data-image="url"; you have to love a standard; the end users will understand this as much as they do the anchor tag itself, ha ha. So the question is now; will other Widget designers follow suit? Its clear that this will not pass the W3C's validation test until they update it to include HTML 5 standards; but I always look forward to standards and not backward or even at what we have now, if it doesn't suit my needs; so after all this writing, its just a point to consider when designing a site and using Widgets or writing your own JavaScripts to add Web 2.0 features; such that you do it in a way that doesn't have a negative impact on your site.

There is a fine line Widget designers need to walk, SEO, Accessibility and ease of use for end users, most who are none programmers types; I'd like to get as many options from webmasters whom might use Widgets in their pages; how would you like to interact with a widget?

[deepsand]

You might have better luck at getting a response if you placed this in the sub-forum Programming - WebProWorld .

You can ask an Admin., such as rah, to move it for you, so as to avoid having to duplicate it.