[selectors-api] Consider backporting find() behavior to querySelector()

So http://dev.w3.org/2006/webapi/selectors-api2/ introduces the methods  
find() and findAll() in addition to querySelector() and querySelectorAll()  
and changes the scoping behavior for the former methods to match what  
people expect them to do.

I'm not convinced that doubling the API surface is a good idea. If we were  
to do that every time we find that a shipped API has suboptimal behavior,  
the API surface on the Web would grow exponentially and we wouldn't make  
the overall situation any better. What if we find a new problem with  
find() after it has shipped? Do we introduce yet another method?

I think we should instead either fix the old API (if it turns out to not  
Break the Web) or live with past mistake (if it turns out it does). To  
find out whether it Breaks the Web (and the breakage can't be evanged), I  
suggest we ship the backwards-incompatible change to querySelector() in  
nightly/aurora (or equivalent) in one or more browsers for some time.

-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software

Received on Monday, 18 June 2012 14:44:10 UTC