Re: Applicable elements for predefined classnames

Matthew Raymond wrote:
> Note that |role| is not immune to the problem of naming conflicts.
>
>    Because new "roles" may be added in future HTML specifications,
> earlier user agents will have to ignore unidentified roles so that they
> can preserve graceful degradation for future HTML specs. Thus, people
> may start using roles that are undefined for a given namespace (or use
> undefined roles without namespaces). This is especially true of clueless
> web authors who don't necessarily understand what |role| is:

1. If authors use their own arbitrary values with @class,
    then this is absolutely correct use of @class.

2. When authors use their own arbitrary values with @role,
    then this will NOT be the correct use of @role.

Similarly authors can make up their own element <foo>, which
might be assigned a meaning in some future spec of HTML.
But usually there is no benefit in making up your own elements,
and people rarely do it. Similarly do they rarely come up with new
values for other attributes with predefined sets of values.
Why should it be the case with @role?

--
Rene Saarsoo

Received on Wednesday, 9 May 2007 12:10:58 UTC