[whatwg] HTML 5 : Misconceptions Documented

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 29 Jul 2008, Garrett Smith wrote:
>
> I took a brief look at the WF 2.0 document yesterday and found some
> serious misconceptions and examples of "programming by coincidence."
> These reflect very poorly on html5.
> 
> The errors can be found on the link:
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-forms/current-work/#select-check-default
> 
> Doc Bugs:
> 1) Treating a a form element as an HTMLCollection.
> 2) The use of - with - to augment the scope chain is not necessary.
> 3) Calling the "elements" HTMLCollection an "array"
> 
> (1) The definition of HTMLFormElement does not have a specialized 
> [[Get]] for element names (nor should there be, as this is known to be 
> problematic). The example in the documetation depends on such behavior.

It actually does at this point.


> (2) - with - augments the scope chain with the object. This is 
> completely unnecessary here and will create problems if, for example, 
> there is an element named "watch". It is a bad practice and I see this 
> influence in the popular libraries.

This is a non-issue in the HTML5 spec, it seems.


> (3) There is no specification for a special [[Get]] for the "elements" 
> HTMLCollection as a shortcut to "namedItem", either (though this would 
> not seem to be a problem, and all implementations have supported this 
> behavior for quite a long time). I did notice that the elements 
> collection is mistakenly called an 'array'. This is a serious 
> documentation mistake of the worst kind: The spreading of 
> misinformation. It will continue influence the muddy knowledge that is 
> so common among most developers who tend want to call "push" et c 
> directly on that NodeList object (see the "dojo.NodeList" for details). 
> The elements Collection should be called an HTMLCollection and this 
> should be changed immediately.

Is this all resolved in HTML5?

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