[whatwg] Arbitrary HTML in option-elements
Olav Junker Kjær
olav at olav.dk
Tue Nov 30 05:57:32 PST 2004
It would be a useful feature if arbitrary HTML was allowed in option
elements. E.g. items in a dropdown could have different icons.
However, I think it's a bad idea to declare rendering undefined in this
case. (section 2.18)
Since arbitrary HTML in option-elements is a genuinely useful feature,
some authors are probably going to take advantage of it, if it is
available in some implementations. This will lead to incompatibilities.
History shows that web authors don't care about what features is allowed
or forbidden according to the spec. They care about what features
actually works in "the real world", i.e. in the dominant existing
implementations - regardless of whether its official feature or an
undocumented error-handling behavior.
Along the same lines, I think its a bit misleading to warn against
putting form-elements into select-elements because of usability-issues
(also section 2.18). The warning implies that you *can* put forms into
options, but usually shouldn't, while its actually forbidden by the DTD
in section A.
Olav Junker Kjær
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