[whatwg] Working this summer

[Matthew Raymond]

Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>>I don't really follow what you are proposing here. Could you give
>>more details?
> 
> 
> Think of a SELECT element which has a table formatted dropdown list. 
> This enables you to do thinks like:
> 
>    Name             Tel
>    A. van Kesteren  000434
>    I. Hickson       213432
> 
> I believe I proposed something similar before based on a proposal from 
> 1996 in www-html[1].
> 
> [1]<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/1996Aug/0446.html>

    Matthew Thomas had a similar idea:

http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2004-December/002600.html

    It has a few problems, though. In legacy browsers the column headers 
aren't visible and the content of other fields isn't visible. Here's an 
improved version that works better with legacy user agents:

| <label for="result1">Results of Query 1</label><br>
| <shead for="result1">
|   <sh sort="asc">Number <sh>Name <sh>Department<br>
| </shead>
| <select table id="result1" name="results1" size="4">
|  <option value="234"><sd>234 <sd>Adams, John <sd>Human Resources
|  <option value="33"><sd>33 <sd>Franklin, Ben <sd>Finance
|  <option value="199"><sd>199 <sd>Harrison, W. H. <sd>Marketing
|  <option value="1022"><sd>1022 <sd>Lincoln, Abe <sd>IS
|  <option value="599"><sd>599 <sd>Washington, Marsha <sd>IS
| </select>

    This is what it would look like in XHTML:

| <label for="result1">Results of Query 1</label><br>
| <shead for="result1">
|   <sh sort="asc">Number</sh> <sh>Name</sh> <sh>Department</sh><br>
| </shead>
| <select table id="result1" name="results1" size="4">
|  <option value="234">
|   <sd>234</sd> <sd>Adams, John</sd> <sd>Human Resources</sd>
|  </option>
|  <option value="33">
|   <sd>33</sd> <sd>Franklin, Ben</sd> <sd>Finance</sd>
|  </option>
|  <option value="199" selected>
|   <sd>199</sd> <sd>Harrison, W. H.</sd> <sd>Marketing</sd>
|  </option>
|  <option value="1022">
|   <sd>1022</sd> <sd>Lincoln, Abe</sd> <sd>IS</sd>
|  </option>
|  <option value="599">
|   <sd>599</sd> <sd>Washington, Marsha</sd> <sd>IS</sd>
|  </option>
| </select>

    For a number of existing user agents, the above markup could be 
styled with CSS to give it the appearance of a listview control. In this 
manner, we can support true listview-style controls for HTML5 user 
agents and simulated ones for legacy user agents using the same markup.

    (Note that I wanted to create a system that just reused the table 
elements that webmasters are already accustom to using, but making such 
a system work in Internet Explorer is problematic.)