[whatwg] Status bars and progress indicators

[Brad Fults]

>> <indicator id="engineTemp">
>>   <slice id="engineTempCold" min="0" max="140" />
>>   <slice id="engineTempGood" min="141" max="220" />
>>   <slice id="engineTempHot" min="221" /> </indicator> ...
>> indicator#engineTemp { indicator-style-type: vertical-bar } 
>> indicator#engineTemp slice#engineTempCold { background-color: #00f } 
>> indicator#engineTemp slice#engineTempGood { background-color: #0f0 } 
>> indicator#engineTemp slice#engineTempHot { background-color: #f00 }

> This seems like overkill for what is essentially just a little bar to show
the relevant of a search result or the percentage use of someone's quota.

The point is that whether or not showing search result relevance or a user's
quota usage is 90% of the cases where an indicator is needed, there is no
reason
to limit a widget at design time to 90% of its actual scope. There are
certainly
needs for an indicator widget where there are varying degrees of importance
and/or levels of values within the indicator, hence the "slice".

Putting levels as arbitrary as "good", "bad", and "medium" is irresponsible
and
doesn't take into account other valid uses for the widget, nor future
considerations.

> On a gauge it is very common to see a line beyond which the indication is 
> "bad" (or "low", or "high", whichever). I don't think I've ever seen a 
> gauge with a level beyond which the result was "shoes" or "Bolivia".

The point was to highlight the arbitrariness of "low" and "high" or "good"
and
"bad". I can immediately think of cases where a heat indicator would have at
least five levels of values that need to be separated. There are hundreds of
other possibilities and if an indicator widget is to be built, it should be
generic enough to handle all logical needs for indication.

This is very much the same reason that you wouldn't see SVG specifying an
element called <circle-with-2px-red-border-and-a-caption-on-the-right />.

-BF