[whatwg] Selectable category tree, nested optgroups?

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

2009/7/9 Oldřich Vetešník <vetesnik at mrmil.cz>:
> Hi,
>
> Imagine you have a (for example) category tree like this:
>
> * Cars
>  * Sporty
>  * Limo
>    * 18 wheeler
>  * Bloody good
>  * Big
> * Places to live in
>  * Villa
>  * Flat
>  * Under bridge
> ...
>
> and you are to select one for your article of some sort. <optgroup> isn't
> capable of doing this at the moment as it cannot be nested and you cannot
> select "Cars" category (it's its label attribute). Currently this is done by
> intending with spaces and, in my humble opinion, it doesn't look too
> accessible - I wouldn't want to crawl through it with my screenreader if it
> was a longer list.
>
> I'm here to ask if there is/could be a better way than intending.

This has been suggested before, and even made it into the spec at one
point, but got removed because there didn't seem to be a way to do
this in a backwards-compatible manner.  There was also the suggestion
of a new element to use for this case, but that appeared late enough
that it's being pushed to "v2" for the moment - html5 already makes a
*ton* of changes and additions to forms.  ^_^

~TJ