[whatwg] Suggestion: Implementation of Tabbed Forms

[Ian Hickson]

I just added a first shot at a section for doing tabs in the Web Apps 
draft. It is probably not perfect, comments welcome.

I tried to take into account the various comments that were made on this 
list regarding tabs, including this e-mail from Matthew:

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>
> We've seen similar demos. You will note that this specific one doesn't 
> display properly in IE6. This is one of several problems that are 
> encountered by webmasters. Here's a list of problems with the current 
> system regarding tabs:
> 
> 1) Inconsistent Standards Support
> 
> This wouldn't be such a problem if we were talking about a single 
> standard, but a tabbed control that performs in the same way as the 
> equivalent OS widgets requires HTML, CSS and Javascript. This makes it 
> very easy to write a tabbed control that breaks on a specific browser or 
> in a specific configuration.

The proposed solution is just an HTML element, so it should address this.


> 2) High Learning Curve
> 
> The creation of tabbed controls requires specific use of multiple web 
> standards that some may not be able to cope with or may not find it 
> worth the effort. This places the use of tabs out of reach for amateur 
> or hobbiest webmasters.

Since it's just HTML here, that should be resolved.


> 3) Lack of Encapsulation
> 
> Current solutions do not take the form of objects. Therefore, one 
> typically has to edit the source files used to create a widget in order 
> to style it. For those who may be using source they didn't write, this 
> could be disastrous for obvious reasons.

Unfortunately, there is no way to style the proposed widget. However, XBL 
would be the way to do it on the long run.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'