[Bug 7076] Client-side image maps attributes missing on the a element

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7076


Michael(tm) Smith <mike@w3.org> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|REOPENED                    |RESOLVED
         Resolution|                            |NEEDSINFO




--- Comment #3 from Michael(tm) Smith <mike@w3.org>  2009-07-05 14:02:48 ---
(In reply to comment #2)
> From a simple testcase, they're only supported in Opera, but this is not
> different (one out of 4 anyway).

So that means there have never been two interoperable implementations of this
particular feature. Which means that the feature never should have been part of
the HTML4 standard to begin with. 

> This does not make the feature deprecate, either. I want a rationale for
> abolishing such useful feature, given that is not difficult to implement and a
> lot of CSS hacks are employed by authors to achieve similar results.

We're not abolishing the feature. If it can't be used interoperably among
multiple UAs, then it's not actually a useful feature at all. It might be a
_potentially_ useful feature, but the fact most browser vendors have not
implemented support for it despite it being part of HTML4 for more than 10
years strongly suggests that there is not enough market demand from users for
that feature to compel the vendors to actually implement it. In other words,
nobody cares about the feature (or even knows about it) enough to make it
worthwhile for browser vendors to implement it.

The lack of existing support for that feature makes this case very different
than the case of discussing whether or not to include a feature like, say,
<font>, that is already interoperably supported.

To put it in other terms: We will not be able to transition the HTML5 spec out
of CR unless we have two interoperable implementations of each feature in the
spec. Given the circumstances I outlined above, I am telling you that it is
extremely unlikely that we will get two interoperable implementations of the
shape and coords attributes on the <a> element, and because of that it is
basically a waste of all of our time to include it in the spec at all given
that we will almost certainly need to drop it from the spec later (when
transitioning out of CR).

Can you demonstrate either that there are actually any significant number of
other users that want this feature supported, or that you have any indication
at all that browser vendors are will somehow change their minds for some reason
and implement support for coords and shape on <a>?


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Received on Sunday, 5 July 2009 14:03:00 UTC