[whatwg] Proposal for a link attribute to replace <a href>

James Graham jg307 at cam.ac.uk
Thu Jul 31 03:48:12 PDT 2008


Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Jul 2008, Simon Pieters wrote:
>>> There are also alternative suggestions, like making <a> contain any 
>>> element. Unfortunately, none of these end up working (e.g. for this 
>>> proposal, <a><p></a> would create an unexpected DOM -- we'd have to 
>>> make </p> end tags not optional when the next end tag was an </a>, 
>>> which would be somewhat confusing).
>> The rules for optional end tags are already pretty confusing. I don't 
>> think it's a problem to require </p> when the "p" element is the last 
>> child of an "a" element.
> 
> Ok. Fair enough. I have allowed <a> elements to surround other 
> (non-interactive) elements.
> 
> 
> On Wed, 30 Jul 2008, James Graham wrote:
>> I think <table><a><tr> also causes problems; being able to link whole 
>> table rows seems like one of the major use cases for this proposal.
> 
> Yes. I don't see how to fix that one.

Given that I'm not sure making <a> transparent is wise. It seems like authors 
will try to use this feature, get tripped up by the table voodoo and become 
confused about why it doesn't work for what seems to be one of the most 
desirable use cases.

-- 
"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
  -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead



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