[Bug 16169] New: Define the CSSElementMap

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=16169

           Summary: Define the CSSElementMap
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson)
        AssignedTo: ian@hixie.ch
        ReportedBy: jackalmage@gmail.com
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org,
                    public-html@w3.org


The CSS3 Image Values spec defines an element() function
<http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-images/#element-reference> which allows an author
use an element as an image.  This was inspired by Mozilla's proprietary
-moz-element() experiment. <https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/-moz-element>

One interesting feature of -moz-element() is the ability to use <img>, <video>,
and <canvas> in it without inserting them into the document; you instead use
mozSetImageElement(<name>, <element>) to give it an additional "pseudo-id"
which will then match the id selector used in -moz-element().

When I put this feature into the specification, I wanted a similar feature, but
didn't like the design.  Discussion with Hixie led to the creation of the
CSSElementMap
<http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/dom.html#dom-document-csselementmap>,
which is simply a map from strings to elements, and otherwise works the same
way.  This didn't make it into the W3C's version of HTML5 because it happened
to be in a feature-freeze at the time, and got missed when we unfroze.

I would like the W3C HTML5 to define CSSElementMap as well, matching the WHATWG
HTML5 definition.  There are some caveats, however.

If this feature is purely for CSS, it is more appropriately placed in the
CSSOM.  However, this is potentially useful for similar purposes in other DOM
operations.  For example, querySelector() with an id selector could return
elements from the map, or even getElementByID() (in which case we should rename
it to ElementMap or something).

Do we think that this is better suited as a pure-CSS feature, or are we
interested in integrating it elsewhere in the DOM?

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Received on Thursday, 1 March 2012 14:12:21 UTC