[Bug 13704] Re: The li element (the value attribute) What (other than compatibility with pre-html5 user agents) is the rationale for limiting the value attribute to an integer? The value attribute should be interpreted by user agents as a hint to the user agent about

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13704

--- Comment #2 from Aryeh Gregor <ayg@aryeh.name> 2011-08-08 17:23:30 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #0)
> What (other than compatibility with pre-html5 user agents) is the rationale
> for limiting the value attribute to an integer?

Compatibility might be a significant issue here.  Consider the following URL:

data:text/html,<!doctype html>
<script>alert(typeof document.createElement("li").value)</script>

Browsers all alert "number".  Changing a long-established IDL attribute from a
number to a string could have significant compatibility impact.  For instance,
right now if you have <li value=" 1">, the .value attribute in JavaScript will
be 1, not " 1".  Likewise, currently if you have <li value="foo">, browsers
will just ignore the value attribute, and it's almost certain there are pages
relying on that.  So it's not a good idea to change at this point without
compelling reason.

(In reply to comment #1)
> Yes, the fact that list numbering is actually a vital part of the content in
> legal documents is important.  The CSS Lists module is addressing this
> directly, so that you can put the list marker inline with the rest of the
> content, but still style it as a list marker.

What would the markup look like for this?  Overall it sounds like a better
idea, because it has much better fallback for legacy UAs, and it allows markup
of the item (bold, underline, etc.).

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Received on Monday, 8 August 2011 17:23:34 UTC