Meanwhile, I'm very pleased to find that I'm not the only one interested in footnotes and sidenotes on the Web.Tip: To open additional Quick Notes, press Windows + Alt + N on your keyboard for each additional Quick Note that you want to create. I'm still planning to research and write an article about my approach to this interesting subject.īut that's something for the future. Therefore any online CSS/JavaScript system should also support the browsing of notes, without being forced to click footnote links in the main text time and again. Serendipity is an important scientific tool, and it should be encouraged. When reading a book with footnotes (and not endnotes!), I often catch myself reading through the notes first, and occasionally I think: "What an interesting note! Which bit of text refers to it?" Footnotes can contain nice extra's and side-stories that don't directly have anything to do with the main subject of the book, and this serendipitous information can occasionally come in quite handily. It can use a backlink to the text, and besides I miss being able to browse the notes themselves. I like Timothy Groves's proposal, but, as I said, I feel it can be improved. With the markup out of the way, we can concentrate on presenting notes on our Web pages. So until proven wrong, I'm going to assume that is "the best" way of marking up footnotes. That seems to be just the right solution. When I met him at the Amsterdam JavaScript meeting, I asked Anne van Kesteren's advice, and he suggested using the element. Personally I feel that footnotes are less important than the main text of the document, and with that in mind I wondered about their semantic status. No structure for it exists at all.Ī footnote system is lacking in HTML, and I agree with Joe that that's weird for a language originally meant for distributing scientific publications. In HTML or XHTML, there’s no such thing as a footnote. Nonetheless Joe is totally right in one extremely important respect: It isn't, it refers back to the text referring to the footnote.Īs to the praise-heaping on A-listers, I side with Richard. Joe is wrong when he describes John's system as "a 'Back to Top of Page' link in sequined cocktail dress and rouge". Besides, Nick Finck of Digital Web Magazine fame also contributed to the discussion, and he added the backlink feature to DWM articles (see for instance this 1999 article). Back in 1999 I myself proposed adding such a backlink to a footnote, and I don't suppose I was the first one to think of it. Joe's main objection is that John's solution is not original. I myself have a few things to say about these three articles, too.įirst of all, they all discuss footnotes, and not sidenotes, and as I said before I fully agree with Andreas that sidenotes are the way to go for the Web. Richard updated his post in response to Joe's remarks. This is an example of heaping praise upon an A-lister for doing something everyday and common under the guise of innovation. On 24 July Joe Clark wrote There’s no such thing as a footnote, in which he confessed himself "not impressed" by Gruber's footnotes, and said: On 20 July John Gruber himself wrote About the Footnotes, where he explained what he is doing. In itself this is a short and not particularly interesting note, but it has a few updates caused by Joe Clark's reply. On 14 July Richard Rutter wrote Gruber's footnotes about John Gruber's handling of footnotes. The other three articles are part of one chain. Andreas Bovens and Timothy Groves seem to have pre-empted me, although their solution can be refined. I was planning to do some research and write a nice article about it for some or other highly respected Web development site. More in particular, it discusses sidenotes at length, and a few months ago I'd decided for myself that sidenotes, and not footnotes, are the way to go on the Web. It contains some links to useful technical examples. The first article I saw was Footnotes and sidenotes with JavaScript and CSS over on Web Graphics. Seven years later, four articles about footnotes caught my eye within about an hour. Meanwhile the wow-factor of this solution has decreased rather dramatically. I ended up using a footnote frame, and back then I was pretty impressed by my own creativity. While I was busy writing largish amounts of JavaScript for money and not paying attention to the wider world, everyone suddenly started talking about footnotes on the Web, a subject I happen to be highly interested in.īack in 1998 I created my very first site, a summary of my research into the Thidrekssaga, and since it was supposed to be a scientific publication I needed a footnote system.
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