[whatwg] Selectable category tree, nested optgroups?

[Ian Hickson]

On Thu, 9 Jul 2009, Oldøich Vete¹ník wrote:
> 
> 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.

On Fri, 24 Jul 2009, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> 
> 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 is exactly right.

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