Proposed improvements to the mailing lists archives

Abstract and status

Since the last update of the software creating W3C mailing lists archives (HyperMail), several flaws in their structure and layout have been identified, especially accessibility-wise.

To remove these flaws, several people in W3C have been working with the Hypermail community and the WAI community to find fixes.

The new archives layout that resulted from this project will be deployed on all W3C mailing list archives soon (expectations are on early September); as an example, the www-qa-wg@ mailing list archives is already using this new layout.

Feedback on these improvements can be send:

• privately to Dominique Hazaël-Massieux <dom@w3.org> (who supervised the project)
• publicly to the publicly archived mailing list wai-xtech@w3.org

The requests for further improvements are tracked in a todo list for this project.

Follow the various bits that were decided during the design phase of the project.

Making the lists archives more accessible

Previous discussions

This has been discussed on wai-xtech in August 2001. Here are the important threads:

• Brief issues list from Al Gilman
• Proposal for the mailing lists homepage from Al Gilman
• Ian's proposal
• more references from Google

Current proposal

Here are the attemps to incorporate the various improvements suggested until now:

Common to the 3 forms

added both a hypertext link and a link to the mailing list archives usage help page, with accesskey 'h'

for sake of documentation

Uniformes title for sorting methods

gives more structure to the whole

Mailing list top-level index page

changed from 4 columns to 3, moving the link by date to the period column

Easier to navigate

changed the title "sorted by" to "re-sorted"; added "by " to the sorting links

to match with the previous change

added dated titles to the links to the views by thread, author, and subject

so that links can be differentiated easily

added a shortcut to the period lists (should go before the list description, ...) with accesskey "j"

Greg's proposal

removed extraneous <hr>

well, extraneous :)

Period list

Enclosed the navigation links into a <map>

Create a skippable navigation bar

Added an anchor to the first item of the list, linked from the top of the navbar

so that the navigation bar is really skippable

add "sort by" in the title of the links to the various sorted views

Kelly Ford's remarks (Mar 14 2002)

Added accesskeys to the links in the navbar (not for functions that may appear several times: "next in thread", "reply") - should appear only in the first navbar

building a common interface to the archives, choice of accesskeys par Greg's proposal

Added titles to the related messages links

So that the links be understandable without having read the text before

Message page

Enclosed the related messages links into a <map>

Create a skippable navigation bar

Added an anchor to the begin of the message, linked from the top of the navbar

so that the navigation bar is really skippable

Added titles to the related messages links

So that the links be understandable without having read the text before

Added accesskeys to the links in the navbar (not for functions that may appear several times: "next in thread", "reply") - should appear only in the first navbar

building a common interface to the archives, choice of accesskeys par Greg's proposal

Changed the wording of the related fields

Al's proposal

Changed <title> construction

To put most precise info before

Adding more informations about subscribing and posting on a mailing list top-level index page

Done in a different piece of software... Should it be marked up differently for accessibility reasons?

Updating various other aspects

This update is a good occasion to make our archives more useful and compliant with our own guidelines.

Common to the 3 forms

made XHTML

easier to manipulate, eating our own dog food

Added navigation to upper level

Per David's suggestion

Added links using pre-defined rel [not done]

Very handy in browsers that support them

Mailing list top-level index page

enclosed the title and the logo in a "head" section

cleaner, logo needed to be in a div anyway

changed the logo URI

Use the recommended one

Transitional -> Strict: removed the border attribute in the logo link

Cleaner

changed the search form

To use the new search engine.

Removed <colgroup span="6"></colgroup>

useless

changed the td in thead to th

use the right markup for the right thing

removed the empty row between years, replaced by different tbody with the appropriate titles

Makes more sense

removed extraneous <br> at the top of the address element

extraneous

Added a navigation bar

Consistent with other pages, useful

Period list

Transitional -> Strict: removed align in <h1>, removed <strong>, removed noshade

Cleaner

made the nav bar use a <ul> list and <dfn>

instead of using ugly <strong>s

Changed the dates format from "Wed, Aug 01 2001" to "Wed 01 Aug 2001"

Easier to read

Enclosed the navigation bar and the title in a head section

Cleaner, necessary for the the <map>

Enclosed the bottom navbar and generation info into a foot section

Cleaner, necessary for the the <map>

Changed the message anchors to begin with a letter [not done, previous scheme kept for URI preserving reasons]

Ids in XML must begin with a letter

Added a link to the search engine form

So that it can be accessed directly

Moved the starting and ending dates on the first line, made them fit in one line

save vertical space

Removed <br> inside the <h1> tag

extraneous

Email page

Transitional -> Strict: removed <strong>, removed noshade

Cleaner

changed the date format from "Sun, Aug 26 2001" to "Sun 26 Aug 2001"

Easier to read

removed empty <p>

useless (?)

Moved from <strong> to a <ul> list

cleaner

Added a link to the search engine form

So that it can be accessed directly

Enclosed the bottom navbar and generation info into a foot section

Cleaner, necessary for the the <map>

remove the (weird) empty <pre> </pre> between attachments (@@@ does not appear on the model)

Useless

Enclosed the body of the message in a seperated <pre id="body"> (that is, separated from the header)

So that it can be CSS'd adequately

Took out the header from <pre>

Better readability

Separated options between top and bottom navigation bar

to get a top navbar as short as possible

Added an alternative stylesheet to have a non-preformatted format on <pre> [not done]

Useful for mails badly formatted

Link to message-id as a mid: scheme URI [not done]

Per DanC's request

Changed order of the navigation links (next by date/by thread) [not done]

The latter is more often useful than the former

Moved the message-id out of the email part

Not useful for most archives users

Removed the subject: line in the email part

redundant with title, saves space

Results

• output of the new HTML formatter for the archives
• mailing list top-level index page proposal
• Period view proposal
• Message view proposal

Unresolved issues

• is it possible to have a link to the lastest period/message and should we add an accesskey to it?
• can we replace "calendar period" by the appropriate time length (quarter/month/else?)?
• can we create links from one period to its predecessor and -if relevant- successor?
• can we fix the URI detection and have all the registered schemes recognized?
• can we put full dates instead of abbreviated ones? add the time of reception in received date, with a defined timezone (UTC?)?
• is it possible to have a different behaviour depending on whether the email is part of a thread or not? [typically, the rel='next' link would point to next by thread if available, next by date otherwise]