Re: [rfc-i] Update on the CSS - second round

[Sam Whited <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 7:19 AM, Andrew G. Malis <[e-mail]> wrote:
> I completely disagree regarding the TOC on small screens. I like that
> wherever I am in the document, I can open the TOC, refer to it, scroll it up
> and down, and then if I close it without clicking on a link, I’m back in the
> exact same place in the document.

Hi all,

I don't often comment on IETF related things, and I'm sure this has
been discussed to death, but I wanted to point out that this is
*always* a problem any time JavaScript based menues are used, and
though I agree that it's nice to be able to quickly get to the TOC
from anywhere, I don't think we should add this feature if JavaScript
has to be involved.

How many times have you gone to a site, moused over a menu, gotten a
JavaScript drop down, moved the mouse down onto it only to have the
menu dissapear before you could click anything? Or had it not work on
mobile? Or had it break on <your browser of choice> but not <your
friends browser of choice? With my XMPP Editor hat on: Even with the
tiny snippet of JavaScript we use at the XMPP Standards Foundation to
do syntax highlighting in XEPs is *constantly* broken due to small
edge cases; this can cause readability issues, but it's far less
important than a table of contents in documents used by people all
over the world in different contexts and environments.

I too love the idea of having a table of contents that doesn't require
me to scroll all the way up, and there very well may be a way to do
this in such a way that it will work everywhere, but in general I
suspect that it's going to be more trouble than it's worth for a
feature that isn't all that important in the end. Being able to see
the TOC is critical, being able to get to it quickly is just nice.
Since the usability of the TOC could be broken by this change (and
almots certainly will be for someone, no matter how many iterations we
do on the script), I really think we should ge rid of it (not that I'm
involved or really have any say; just my two cents).

Thanks for doing all this work on the new format; I'm really looking
forward to seeing it in the wild!

Best,
Sam

TL;DR — JavaScript menus always sound like a good idea, but then just
end up annoying half the people who want to read your document.
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