[whatwg] Re: several messages

[Ian Hickson]

On Thu, 1 Jul 2004, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>
>     Okay, but that leaves us back at square one with regards to:
>
>     a) Hiding legacy content from WF2 UAs.
>     b) Hiding WF2 content from legacy UAs.

Why do we have these problems?

For (a), the only real case of really needing to hide content from WF2 UAs
that I can see is the combo-box case, and that is covered by <datalist>.

For (b), I can't think of any cases of needing to hide WF2 content. The
whole point is that WF2 content should degrade reasonably.

What are the specific use cases that require these hiding features?


>>> Your model supports calling the list from a <select> within a template?
>>
>> Sure, why not? It just does a getElementById() on the value of the "list"
>> attribute, then does a getElementsByTagName() to get all the <option>
>> children of that element. It doesn't matter where the element is.
>
> Hmm. So, really, if we cold come up with a solution for (a) above
> that wouldn't involve inappropriate use of the repetition model, then
> what I had would be fine:
>
>     <input type="text" name="combo1" list="list1" />
>     <norender>
>       <label> or select from the list:
>         <select id="list1"><!-- Stuff. --></select>
>       </label>
>     </norender>

Change "norender" to "datalist" and that's exactly what I proposed.


> Actually, in this case, we don't even need <datalist>, and the
> WF2-only code would look like this:
>
>     <input type="text" name="combo1" list="list1" />
>     <norender>
>       <select id="list1"><!-- Stuff. --></select>
>     </norender>

Again, s/norender/datalist/ and that's what I proposed. If you then remove
the <select> tags, and move the id to the <datalist> tag, you get even
simpler:

     <input type="text" name="combo1" list="list1" />
     <datalist id="list1"><!-- Stuff. --></datalist>


> Then again, with an element like <norender>, you could even do this:
>
>     <norender>
>       <input type="text" name="combo1" />
>       <label for="list1"> or select from the list:</label>
>     </norender>
>     <select editable id="list1" name="combo1"><!-- Stuff. --></select>
>
> So, in a WF2-compliant UA, you just use <select editable>. We keep
> trying to kill it, but it just won't die!!! ;)

That would lose the ability to do type="uri" with an autocompletion list,
which was requested (and which I think is quite cool).


> Perhaps I should start a thread on what parts of the XUL menu model
> would be appropriate for inclusion in Web Apps 1.0...Get the ball
> rolling while you finish up WF2.

That's the wrong way to look at it. Instead of saying "which parts of this
solution do we need", we should ask "what problems are we trying to
solve", and then see if the existing solutions are appropriate.

But yes, feel free to discuss this.

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