Re: Form "select" suggestion

----- Original Message -----
From: <DBHarkey@aol.com>
To: <www-html@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 08, 1999 7:16 PM
Subject: Re: Form "select" suggestion


> > The attribute would add an icon (16  pixels by 16 pixels for a normal
box,
> or
> > scaled to size depending on how large the font of the select box is) to
an
> option in
> > the box.
> >
> >  Although this is a nice idea, it seems to me it would be done better in
> CSS.
> >  Perhaps SELECT boxes could be counted as lists so that the
> 'list-style-image'
> >  property would apply.
>
> I would think otherwise; mainly for 3 reasons:
>
> 1. Ease.  In my opinion, it's much easier to simply add a tag in HTML code
> than to set up a style sheet.  And it's probably much easier to remember
> ICON, ICONSPACING, ICONALIGN than to put a list-style-image property with
> each option.

XML + one of the behaviors proposals would provide a better solution to
this. I think the days of adding elements to HTML are pretty much over.
XHTML + XML namespaces should allow you to use XHTML elements along with
elements in any other namespace, including your own. I think that once XHTML
is finalized, the HTML namespace should probably be considered to be set in
stone. I see no benefit to adding to it.

> 2. For folks just learning HTML, a tag is easier to remember than learning
> CSS properties.

So folks "just learning HTML" won't be able to do this until they broaden
their skill set a bit. It just isn't pragmatic to attempt to make the full
suite of possibilities available to someone who's learned only the basics.
As features are added, complexity must increase.

> 3. CSS is still pretty buggy on many browsers;

Okay, so since the current feature set is poorly implemented, I guess we
need to add more features. Wonderful.

> and assuming that this would
> be adopted with CSS3, it wouldn't be supported with many browsers right
away.

As opposed to getting this feature adopted in HTML version ??, where it
would be picked up by browsers immediately?

>  An addition into the next HTML version would probably have a better
chance
> of becoming standard for all browsers.

Why do you think this? It hasn't yet happened for features in HTML 4.

Braden

Received on Thursday, 8 April 1999 20:25:14 UTC