[whatwg] Spec comments, sections 3.1-4.7

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:00 PM, Aryeh Gregor<Simetrical+w3c at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 2:11 PM, Anne van Kesteren<annevk at opera.com> wrote:
>> You seem to base most of your argument on that <progress> will not be stylable. I think the idea is that it will be stylable though.
>
> Yes, I guess I got sort of sidetracked.  I assume the idea is that it
> will be styleable eventually, but I don't see how it would work with
> existing CSS properties, so I'd assume it would take significant
> implementation effort and not happen very soon.  I don't think it will
> be used very widely or usefully until it becomes styleable.
>
> Beyond that, the use-cases just seem very narrow compared to other
> elements invented in HTML 5.  The number of progress bars needed on
> the web is pretty modest, and the gains from marking them up
> semantically don't seem to be large.  For some particular types of
> progress bars, <progress> gives better accessibility than any
> straightforward existing possibility I can think of, but a) authors
> concerned about accessibility could usually add some kind of text
> without any trouble, and b) the progress of some activity is rarely
> critical information in web apps, so if you're missing it you usually
> won't be missing much anyway.

Well, it's a default widget in jQuery UI.  I think that makes a good
case for it being common enough that it'll see use.

(For reference, the other default widgets are a datepicker and slider,
which are new <input> types, a styleable dialog box, and then
accordion and tab displays (which were hit by some proposals between
Brad Kemper and I on the CSS list a while back).)

~TJ