Re: [whatwg] allow <link> in body + DOM position as a rendering hint

On Sat, 01 Nov 2014 02:34:42 +0200, Ilya Grigorik <igrigorik@gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Before we get into the pros and cons of "scoped", I think it's important  
> to
> highlight that <link> in body is already a fact of life:
> 1) developers already put <link> tags in body, specs be damned.
> 2) all browsers support <link> tags in body because of #1.
>
> Given the above conditions, the spec is out of sync with reality and I
> think it's worth considering updating the spec to reflect this? Doing so
> would also allow the browsers to convert this case from an error  
> condition
> into an optimization - e.g. we can treat position as a hint to optimize
> rendering.

I think this line of reasoning is missing one consideration, namely the  
negative effect of using <link> or <style> (without scoped) in body:

>> A bare <link> or <style> in body means that you have to re-evaluate
>> previous elements. With scoped you don't have to do that. IIRC this was  
>> the
>> main reason for the current authoring requirements in the spec.

Without looking at the negative side your line of reasoning would equally  
apply to allowing e.g. <font> (developers use it, browsers support it).

You might disagree that the above is negative, but then you'd have to  
explain why.

> If <style> doesn't have the properties that we want from existing impls  
> but
>> we think that restricting authors to only using scoped stylesheets in  
>> body
>> is a good idea, we could add the scoped attribute to <link> and allow  
>> <link
>> scoped> in body.
>
>
> Sounds like an interesting idea! That said, I'd treat this as a new  
> feature
> and a separate discussion from above (simply allowing <link> in body in  
> the
> spec).

OK, but I'm still interested in knowing if scoped is a limitation for this  
use case or not. If it is not practical for developers to use scoped  
stylesheets for this then that seems like it would overrule the negative  
effect. If it is practical then we can still avoid the negative effect (as  
far as authoring conformance goes anyway).

-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software

Received on Saturday, 1 November 2014 17:18:33 UTC