Re: ACTION-23 - Draft a proposal to drop online events from HTML5

On 26 August 2012 15:00, Jo Rabin <jo@linguafranca.org> wrote:

> PROPOSED RESOLUTION: Coremob reverses its position on dropping online from
> HTML5 so there's no need to communicate a request for it to be dropped.
>
> We could go further and request a caveat or hint be inserted in HTML5
> about "failing early". Andrew, would you like to draft some specific text
> for that as a PROPOSED RESOLUTION?
>

Do we need a resolution to change position on this?  I don't think a
resolution was adopted to create the position in the first place, it was
just suggested that we go away and think about it.

The current implementation is confusing because creates an unhelpful
affordance.  It would actually be considerably improved by reversing the
semantics, so in terms of the property, rather than navigator.onLine, we
have navigator.offLine, which is false when online or in unknown state, and
true when offline.  That would make it much clearer for developers who will
naturally tend to trust the positive assertion implied by the value being
true.  The corresponding state-change events might be better renamed as
offlineStart and offlineEnd rather than offline and online for the same
reason.

And these changes would also be backwards compatible.  However, it really
depends how much enthusiasm there is for twiddling with semantics to make
behaviour clearer without functionally achieving anything.  A non-normative
guideline on use of the existing implementation may be easier to achieve,
if a bit of a cop out :-)

Happy to draft a resolution - are there any rules for doing so?

Andrew

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