Re: Implementor feedback on new elements in HTML5

On Fri, 4 Sep 2009, Bruce Lawson wrote:
> On Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:43:50 +0100, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> > On Mon, 31 Aug 2009, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> > > 
> > > - Elements requiring changes to <legend> parsing: <figure>, 
> > > <details> These elements seem quite useful, but they will be 
> > > unusable on the public Web until all browsers are updated to change 
> > > how they parse <legend> and the new versions are widely adopted. 
> > > [snip] We will consider fixing our parsing of <legend> outside 
> > > <fieldset> soon, so that we're not the blocker. But it seems like it 
> > > would be easier to change the elements that carry the label/caption.
> > 
> > These elements aren't especially critical, so if people would feel 
> > like it was less of an issue to just not include them in this version, 
> > but to still fix the parsing of <legend>, and then to introduce them a 
> > few yeards down the road, once the parsing is fixed, then I'm fine 
> > with doing that
> 
> Isn't that throwing the baby out with the bathwater? The details element 
> is especially useful (I've seen sites pull in the whole jQuery library 
> just to make an expanding/ collapsing "details" div) and figure would be 
> very welcome to associate image captions with images.

It's more like throwing out the soap with the soap dish. Waiting another 
few years is not a problem, especially since people are already working 
around the problem successfully.


> Why not abandon the idea of reusing legend and use <c>, <description> or 
> some other such element?

Because the problem with <legend> is temporary, whereas the problems 
introduced with a new element would be permanent.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 14 September 2009 08:37:11 UTC