[whatwg] Markup for Web Forms 2.0 that still requires discussion

[Jim Ley]

On Tue, 6 Jul 2004 13:35:40 +0000 (UTC), Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> On Sun, 4 Jul 2004, Matthew Raymond wrote:
> >
> > 1) The <datalist> element.
> >
> > I disapprove of this tag for two reasons. The first is that it
> > depends on abusive markup for it to properly degrade in a legacy UA.
> 
> I don't really understand why you think it is abusive.
> 
> It would be abusive if the semantic of <datalist> was "list of options",
> but it is "a list of options, or an alternate representation for legacy
> UAs". It has a lot in common with the <object> element, in fact.

So why not use OBJECT?  It would get around the abusiveness (which I
have some sympathies with)

> > The second reason is that you can accomplish the same thing using the
> > ignore attribute without introducing a new element.
> 
> I don't see why introducing elements is worse than introcuing attributes,
> in this context.

Legacy UA's do a better job of dealing with new attributes, than they
do new elements.

Jim.