Acronym ? Are you sure ?

[Eleglin]

I see some <acronym> in the code of SMF 1.1.
For example :

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<acronym title="Simple Machines Forum">SMF</acronym>

Keep mind that Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations, such as NATO, laser, and IBM, that are formed using the initial letters of words or word parts in a phrase or name. Acronyms and initialisms are usually pronounced in a way that is distinct from that of the full forms for which they stand: as the names of the individual letters (as in IBM), as a word (as in NATO), or as a combination (as in IUPAC). (Wikipedia)

So it should be :

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<abbr title="Simple Machines Forum">SMF</abbr>

[Thantos]

While you are right that it should be an abbreviation it turns out that the acronym tag is better supported cross-browser then abbr.  What is even more sad is that in the draft standards acronym is going away in favor of the abbr tag.

[koji]

What is even more sad is that in the draft standards acronym is going away in favor of the abbr tag.

Are you sure? The acronym tag is currently part of the W3C Accessibililty Conformance guidelines.

[Dannii]

Which doesn't mean much...
He's probably talking more about HTML5: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/section-phrase.html#the-abbr

[koji]

"It is estimated that HTML5 will reach a W3C recommendation in the year 2022 or later."

[Dannii]

Won't be that long.. I think 2011-2012 is more likely. But it's good to take a long time, rather than rushing things and producing bad specs like they have in the past.

[Peter Duggan]

I see some <acronym> in the code of SMF 1.1.
For example :

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<acronym title="Simple Machines Forum">SMF</acronym>

Keep mind that Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations, such as NATO, laser, and IBM, that are formed using the initial letters of words or word parts in a phrase or name. Acronyms and initialisms are usually pronounced in a way that is distinct from that of the full forms for which they stand: as the names of the individual letters (as in IBM), as a word (as in NATO), or as a combination (as in IUPAC). (Wikipedia)

So it should be :

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<abbr title="Simple Machines Forum">SMF</abbr>

OK, let's get something straight here! SMF BBC supports both acronym and abbreviation and I'm responsible for the poor example of acronym in the SMF Help (which remains substantially the same as I wrote it for SMF 1.0). But I'm also able to defend myself by citing a post from the Team Boards on 13 December 2004 in which I said:

Thinking about this, SMF is not a good example of an acronym because it's not a 'word', so we should change that to something like RADAR before releasing this.

So there!

[Thantos]

Wouldn't it be easier to come up with a pronunciation for SMF?  Something like "Smif"

[Dannii]

No. Smuff maybe.

[Eleglin]

IE6 and IE5 don't support <abbr> but they support <span>

You can use php to replace abbr by span, for IE only (thanks to Arkseth for his help )

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<?php echo ((ereg("MSIE", getenv("HTTP_USER_AGENT")))?'<span class="abbr"':"<abbr"); ?> title="Simple Machines Forum">SMF <?php echo ((ereg("MSIE", getenv("HTTP_USER_AGENT")))?"</span>":"</abbr>"); ?>


[SleePy]

Eleglin,

Not to be rude or anything. But that isn't the brightest of options.
Really if we wanted to do this I would suggest doing it in Subs.php where the bbc code itself is loaded and worked out.

[Eleglin]

It was just an idea with a simple example.
Of course it should be made for the BBcode, but I'm not a developper, so I let them find the hard code for subs.php

It may be not a brightest option, but it's better than <acronym> (unless if you want to satisfy Redmond  )

Javascript it's not a good option (because it needs javascript enhanced)