I never bothered to document how I do sidenotes because they’re basically a simplified version of other implementations. But several people have asked about them, so in the spirit of sharing, here are my Super Simple Sidenotes. No javascript, just html and css.
While browsing the WICG discussion forms, I stumbled upon a proposal for a standardized element in HTML5. I made two comments, and stopped myself before writing a third; this called for a blog post. I think HTML should have a spoiler element.
Adding a spoiler element to HTML seems like an obvious need that people have developed all manner of workarounds for. This article does a good job of laying out needs and technical considerations.
Another example: on Goodreads, where spoiler alerts are essential, they offer a <spoiler> tag in their review field or allow you to mark the entire review as spoilers.
I don’t understand how technical specs are created so I’m coming in solely from the use case side. Would it be possible for spoiler-tagged text and/or sensitive tagged graphics to be excluded from indexing or search snippets? 🤔 If not, seems like images tagged as sensitive could be filtered out of safe search results.
I do wonder whether spoilers and sensitive material are the same. In practice, we have adopted what spoiler functionality is available as a means to protect sensitive information, but ought it not be its own element? Some people might care about spoilers but not sensitive material, while others might not give a damn about spoilers but realllllly don’t want to see spider pics. If not, “obscured” might be a better descriptor to lump spoilers and sensitive info together — though “spoiler” has the benefit of already being used 😉
Sidenotes can make a plain text richer. Here’s how you can implement them with HTML and CSS alone.
It was surprisingly difficult to find info about implementing sidenotes rather than endnotes. This page lists a lot more implementation options.
CSS tables are useful for organizing and presenting data in an appealing way. Visuals are an important aspect of websites.
Visitors do not want to have to read dry, boring, and long lines of text. Instead, they want to see images, graphs, and tables.
Not every website needs a table but those with da…
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