Re: HTMLElement.register--giving components tag names

On 7/09/11 7:20 AM, Alex Russell wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 8:20 PM, Ian Hickson<ian@hixie.ch>  wrote:
>> On Sat, 3 Sep 2011, Dominic Cooney wrote:
>>>> I think the XBL approach is far superior here -- have authors use
>>>> existing elements, and use XBL to augment them. For example, if you
>>>> want the user to select a country from a map, you can use a<select>
>>>> with a list of countries in<option>  elements in the markup, but then
>>>> use CSS/XBL to bind that<select>  to a "component" that instead makes
>>>> the<select>  look like a map, with all the interactivity that implies.
>>> That sounds appealing, but it looks really hard to implement from where
>>> we right now.
>> I don't think "it's hard" is a good reason to adopt an inferior solution,
> Likewise, intimating that something is better because it's hard is a
> distraction.
>
>> especially given that this is something that will dramatically impact the
>> Web for decades to come.
> The more complex the thing, the more we're saddled with. XBL(2) is
> more complex than the proposed model. It likewise needs to be
> justified all the more.

I agree that XBL2 may have been too ambitious for it's time.

I would say that the simplest thing that would be useful would be:
a) provide a bare-bones shadow DOM
b) implement something like the NodeWatcher proposal - 
http://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/wiki/MutationReplacement#NodeWatch_.28A_Microsoft_Proposal.29

These features are independently useful and would facilitate Javascript 
library solutions similar to both HTMLElement.register and XBL2.

Then step back and see what the Javascript guys do with it. The next 
step might write itself.

Sean

Received on Wednesday, 7 September 2011 00:24:03 UTC