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

[Ian Hickson]

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005, Matthew Raymond wrote:
> > 
> > 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.
> 
> This would seem to undermine your position with regards to using the <a> 
> element for menu labels:
> 
> | <menubar id="appmenu">
> |   <a href="#file">File</a>
> |   <menu>
> 
> Contrast this with the following:
> 
> | <menubar id="appmenu">
> |   <menulabel><a href="#file">File</a></menulabel>
> |   <menu>
> 
> It's essentially the same scenario. In both situations, <a> is being 
> used in a situation where alternative, more semantically appropriate 
> markup already exists for the purposes of fallback. However, as 
> illustrated in both your example and mine, <a> could simply be used 
> within the same alternative markup to create fallback without 
> overloading the semantics of <a>.
>
> So, with implementations of <a coords=""> existing and gaining 
> marketshare, why is <a coords=""> being phased out while <a 
> href="#[menu]"> for use _within_ menus is being phased in?

The <menu> indirection has been dropped now, so this is academic. 
Regarding <a coords="">, I don't think it's used any more now than when I 
decided not to include it in HTML5, so I'm still of the opinion that not 
including it is a good thing.

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