Re: [selectors-api] Selectors API comments: section 2

Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:31:50 +0100, Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc> wrote:
>> I do sort of think that it's a pity to disallow a selectors 
>> implementation in a browser from implementing additional selectors on 
>> top of the ones in the CSS implementation, for example for the reasons 
>> Boris mentioned. I don't feel very strongly about it, but I'm 
>> wondering what the rationale for forbidding it is.
> 
> So that the "API" stays consistent. If a new selector comes up that only 
> makes sense in either we can always revisit this approach.

So for what it's worth I just ran into a selector that basically only 
makes sense in a JS API but not in CSS. Apparently some javascript 
toolkits support a :hidden selector that only matches elements which 
matches elements that aren't displayed (presumably they or a parent are 
display:none or visibility:hidden). Such a selector would never work in 
CSS as it causes circular dependencies, but seems to be popular in 
javascript.

http://ejohn.org/blog/selectors-that-people-actually-use/

The selectors spec doesn't currently define such a selector so it's not 
really an issue now, but it might be in the future.

/ Jonas