[whatwg] native styling for search input boxes

[Nils Dagsson Moskopp]

Am Mittwoch, den 01.10.2008, 09:58 -0700 schrieb Maciej Stachowiak:
> On Oct 1, 2008, at 12:31 AM, Nils Dagsson Moskopp wrote:
> 
> > the look of the input field could be styled just by a value of  
> > "search"
> > for the CSS "appearance". that would have to go through CSS3 WG, but
> > would probabvy be the cleanest approach.
> >
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-ui/#system
> >
> > (i hope this puts an end to input styling discussions)
> 
> The status of being a search field is semantic, not just  
> presentational.
100% agree. But the status of /looking like an OS native widget/ is
purely presentational and CSS 3 has a fitting property for that.
Semantics and presentation can and IMO should be decoupled.

> User agents and assistive technologies could use the  
> knowledge that a field is a search field in all sorts of helpful ways.
What exactly were you imagining ? In the end, it's a text field like any
other.

> Indeed, the semantics would be useful even without the special  
> presentation, but the special presentation gives authors an extra  
> incentive to get it right.
If "giving authors in extra incentive to get it right" was the scope of
any spec discussed here, SGML serializations would not exist and
validators would give out free candy.


Greetings,

Nils