[whatwg] Status bars and progress indicators

[Brad Fults]

> I'm assuming spelling it as gage is American, since they seem to have
trouble with the letter 'u'
> in many other words as well, which I personally find really annoying.

You assume incorrectly. We here in the U.S. are taught "gauge" and until
today I had never seen the alternate "gage" spelling.

> Regardless of the word that ends up being used I think the element should
also have property to
> tell which value is "GOOD" and which is "BAD".

This is the point where we have overstepped the bounds of the element's
semantic flexibility. I believe there should be a <progress>/<progressmeter>
simply because there is a very common need for exactly that widget. Other
indicators such as gauges for quotas, usage, heat levels, etc. should be put
in a generic indicator element that can be styled to the author's wishes.

Whether it be <indicator>, <pie> or whatever,

<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 }

Obviously this could be done with CSS3's nth-child or any other number of
ways, but the idea is that you have slices of a whole. It's easy to see that
indicator-style-type: pie; would be a useful application of the widget as
well.

I'm not in love with the element names here, but I think this structure is
necessary for the type of element that some of you are describing. Such
notions of "good" and "bad" are completely arbitrary and could just as well
be "shoes", "Bolivia", and "jumping".

-BF