[whatwg] Significant inline content vs. attributes and sectional elements

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 10 Mar 2006, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> At 22:08 +0000 UTC, on 2006-03-09, Ian Hickson wrote:
> >
> >  * It should be possible for scripts to add content to placeholder
> >    elements without those placeholder elements being non-conformant.
> >    This is a very useful programming idiom, not least of which because
> >    adding content to an existing element (whether attributes or child
> >    nodes) is a lot easier than adding the element in the first place.
> 
> Wouldn't a <placeholder> element be more appropriate then?

How would that work?


> >  * It should be possible to have a group of pages that have a similar
> >    structure, with elements annotated as necessary. For example, a menu
> >    list could be the same on each page, but with the currently loaded
> >    page simply not having the "href" attribute on its link, or some such.
> 
> I won't claim there might not be valid cases, but this seems like a bad 
> example to me. If something is not a link it should not be marked-up as 
> such. How useful is it to the user to provide a hyperlink that points 
> nowhere?

Well, we decide what "markup for a link" consists of. If we say it is just 
an <a> element with an href="" attribute, then an <a> element without an 
href="" attribute isn't marked up as a link.

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