[Bug 25086] Attr should retain ownerElement property

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=25086

William J. Edney <bedney@technicalpursuit.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |bedney@technicalpursuit.com

--- Comment #17 from William J. Edney <bedney@technicalpursuit.com> ---
Hi. I had opened this issue in another bug:

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=25021

which Robin just closed and pointed me at this one.

My comments can in general are tied in with the comments above: I use XPath, in
a browser, and reach attribute nodes. I then need access to the ownerElements
of these nodes.

But to me, this whole matter is a symptom of a larger problem. Robin quoted
this in his closing of the other bug:

"Note that while it is supported in Gecko and WebKit, it has recently been
removed from Blink which ought to indicate that it is not needed. If you have
data indicating the contrary, it would be a great idea to share it."

I've noticed there have been other justifications for removal of features
because of "data" that Google and others are collecting regarding usage. That
would be all fine and well if Google could reach all of the websites affected -
but they can't and never will. That's because there are many, many websites
behind corporate firewalls that Google and other indexing engines will never
reach. These browser users (i.e. customers) are deploying internal back-office
Web applications that use W3C-approved APIs - APIs that have gone through the
(long and tortuous) standardization process and have been in place for years
and years. And these applications built with those APIs will now be in use for
years and years to come.

Now, there are some APIs that are being removed that were not part of a W3C
approved API - those I don't have a problem with. They were some sort of vendor
extension, etc. and could't really be counted on to be 'future proofed' as
such. 'ownerElement', however, has been around a long time - and has a real use
even in a world where Attributes are no longer Nodes.

I'm not sure where this desire to be anything other than additive to existing
W3C-approved APIs comes from, but it is highly concerning, however, to think
there are codebases in use today that *will* break because folks don't really
have the entire 'usage data' picture, even if they think they do.

Sorry if this got soapboxy.

Cheers,

- Bill

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Received on Wednesday, 16 April 2014 15:54:50 UTC