[whatwg] Spec comments, sections 3.1-4.7

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Aryeh Gregor<Simetrical+w3c at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

It sort of looks like I'm harping on this, doesn't it?  I don't really
care, actually, FWIW.  I'm an author, not an implementer, so extra
features aren't a burden to me.  I just thought it was incongruous
when reading the spec.  If other people think <progress>/<meter> would
be useful enough to justify implementation, then no problem.  I
personally don't see the need to debate it further.