Attention to 'Detail'

October 3, 2020 7:34 AM

Honestly, I just wanted to note and give a cheer to mbrubeck for recently demonstrating that you could do this (or see directly below), the 'details' element, something I never knew about HTML and Metafilter. Kind of cool, I like learning techie new things.

I'm Henry the Eighth I am,
Henry the Eighth I am, I am
I got married to the widow next door
She's been married seven (breath) times before, and
everyone yells at Hen-a-ry
"HEN-A-RY!"
Henry the Eighth I am, I am
Henry the Eighth I am
Second verse, same as the first ...

<details><p>here is the stuff you would fold into the expando<p>use "<p>"s for paragraph breaks or "<br>"s for line breaks</details>

(He said the '<summary>' tag doesn't always work consistently across all browsers and themes.)

posted by metabaroque to MetaFilter-Related at 7:34 AM (17 comments total)

frimble will be available later to give the full scoop, but my understanding is whether these tags work is browser-dependent. They're not a special Mefi thing, they're a standard html thing that many browsers support, but some don't. So people should know when using them, the hiding doesn't always work for all readers, so be cautious and don't rely on it for really mission-critical hiding (whatever that means).
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:40 AM on October 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

[...] be cautious and don't rely on it for really mission-critical hiding (whatever that means).

Oh. So I shouldn't be using this as a substitute for a password manager, is what you're saying?
posted by FishBike at 8:15 AM on October 3, 2020 [7 favorites]

Surely the line is "Every one was an 'Enery", that is to say each of her seven previous husbands was called Henry, and he's the eighth husband of that name.
posted by Grangousier at 8:26 AM on October 3, 2020 [5 favorites]

did not expect to get henrolled this morning but not mad
posted by notquitemaryann at 8:33 AM on October 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

You're welcome! For reference, here's a previous MetaTalk thread about <details>.

Also, it looks like some of my info was out of date. The Firefox bug that caused <summary> to be styled wrong on MetaFilter is fixed, so <summary> should now work in all browsers that support <details>.
posted by mbrubeck at 8:53 AM on October 3, 2020

Here's a list of the browsers which support it. It's all the modern ones with the exception of IE and Opera Mini.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 8:59 AM on October 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

doh I'm a web developer and I never knew about this. its cool!
posted by supermedusa at 12:03 PM on October 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

can someone pls explain henrolling? I googled but that just made me really confused...
posted by supermedusa at 12:06 PM on October 3, 2020

It's like rickrolling but with Henrys, referring to metabaroque's "Details" example.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:10 PM on October 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

thanks Greg_Ace, thats what it seemed like but I thought there must be more to it...

we used to have a cat named...Henry. did I do it right?
posted by supermedusa at 12:56 PM on October 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

Everyone needs a

nice cup of tea and a slice of cake. Round about now.

posted by Wordshore at 2:28 PM on October 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

Side note: I find these fairly annoying to use with a screen reader. It will read the summary but then correctly continue on over the detail content, requiring tabbing to the detail element to expand it, which then requires me to jump backwards and things get read twice, etc. It's clever but clever is often hard to read.
posted by introp at 5:42 PM on October 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

we used to have a cat named...Henry. did I do it right?

I believe the usual answer is that we'd need a picture, just to be sure!
posted by notquitemaryann at 9:54 PM on October 3, 2020

Nah dog, everyone needs

a year off and at least a week of their 3 top vices.

Possibly

two weeks or three weeks

posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:51 AM on October 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: It's clever but clever is often hard to read.
posted by zamboni at 3:25 PM on October 4, 2020 [3 favorites]

I wrote an entire game walkthrough in 16 parts using these tags once in a comment on the blue. It took me about six conference calls worth of time to complete. It got all of eight favorites. I’m not bitter at all (no really it was a great game)
posted by inflatablekiwi at 7:26 PM on October 8, 2020

I wonder if that's something that can be reported somewhere. I don't know if the cause would lie with the HTML element or with the browser.

I'd imagine the cause would be with the screen reader. It could optimize for the tag, but since almost nobody uses it, it's not something people have put a lot of effort into.

It's really the same behavior that non screen reader users have. You read the text, then navigate back (with your eyes and mouse, or shift-tab) to the arrow, to expand the content.

The whole control is just kind of sloppy for everyone.
posted by bowbeacon at 11:31 AM on October 10, 2020