- From: Bert Bos <bert@w3.org>
- Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 21:19:27 +0100
- To: www-dom@w3.org
This is the official comment from the CSS working group on the "DOM Level 2 HTML" working draft[1]. It is a week late, my excuses. It got lost. Hopefully it can still be taken into account. [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20011210 ----------8<----------- As you may (or may not) know, checkboxes and radio buttons in user interfaces may not only be "on" or "off", they may also be an in "indeterminate" state which means that they are neither checked nor unchecked. Their state is - indeterminate, and becomes determinate when a user checks them. This is useful for example when you have an option for which there is no reasonable default (for a checkbox) or for a collection of radio buttons for which none should be initially selected. The CSS working group has allowed the styling of the various states of checkboxes and radio buttons with two new pseudo-classes in the Selectors Candidate Recommendation: : :checked - selects elements which are considered toggled on in the : user interface. : : :indeterminate - selects elements which are considered neither : checked nor unchecked in the user interface. -- http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/CR-css3-selectors-20011113/#UIstates What we thought already existed were the respective properties in the DOM on the <input> interface. There is a "checked" property: : attribute boolean checked -- http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20011025/html.html#ID-6043025 ...but there is no corresponding "indeterminate" property. The official feedback on DOM Level 2 HTML is a request to add an "indeterminate" property to Interface HTMLInputElement. : attribute boolean indeterminate It can be defined as follows: : indeterminate of type boolean : : When the type attribute of the element has the value "radio" or : "checkbox", this represents whether the form control is in an : indeterminate state (neither checked nor unchecked), in an : interactive user agent. Changes to this attribute change the state : of the form control, but do not change the value of the HTML value : attribute of the element. As far as implementation status, we will note that there are at least two different implementations. Both IE/Mac and IE/Windows (which have separate DOM implementations) implement input.indeterminate since version 4 (5-6 years ago). Thus the addition of this property should pose no problem for DOM Level 2 HTML exiting CR since there are already two interoperable implementations that have been shipping for quite some time. Mozilla currently lacks this proposed property because when Mozilla's DOM was implemented, the property was not listed in the DOM specification. However, recent changes mean that the support for indeterminate check boxes will be available soon, at least internally (this support may not be exposed in the HTML DOM unless the "indeterminate" property is added to the DOM spec). The DOM is also missing support for some other UI pseudo-classes, such as :hover and :active, and for pseudo-elements, such as ::indeterminate. However, we do not think it would be wise to force this issue at the moment. In our opinion, those issues are not yet mature. There is ongoing work in the CSS working group to find solutions to these problems. Adding .indeterminate to the DOM2 HTML spec is, in our opinion, a reasonable thing to do for now, since there already exists several years' worth of implementation experience. ----------8<----------- Bert Bos, CSS WG chairman -- Bert Bos ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/ http://www.w3.org/people/bos/ W3C/INRIA bert@w3.org 2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93 +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
Received on Monday, 14 January 2002 15:19:29 UTC