[whatwg] Image maps: should we drop <a coords="">?

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> Ian Hickson wrote:
> > Anyone want us to keep <a coords="">?
> 
> The reason I especially liked it was:
> 
>  <object data="foo" usemap="#foo">
>   <map id="foo">
>    <ul>
>     <li><a coords="...">...</a>
>     ...

Yup, it is indeed nice; if image maps had been designed that way from the 
start it would make sense. But it's not _that_ much nicer than <area>, 
which we could define as allowing:

  <object data="foo" usemap="#foo">
   <map id="foo">
    <ul>
     <li><area coords="..." href="..."><a href="...">...</a>
     ...

...which isn't much worse, and has the very important benefit of actually 
working in IE6.


> By the way, will it be deprecated, not mentioned or forbidden? Will 
> Mozilla and Opera drop support for it?

My proposal is to not mention it (and thus make its use non-conforming in 
HTML5 documents). UAs would be within their rights to keep on supporting 
it, though.

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