[whatwg] validationMessage

[timeless]

So... trying to do anything like this is a disaster. But it sounds
like the API is *trying* to handle the problem described below. I'm
not sure it does (and suspect in fact that it doesn't).

===
implementation experience:
GMail with a composed but unsent message will toss up a dialog if you
try to leave the page.

In the MicroB browser on the N900 we provide localized Yes/No buttons
instead of OK/Cancel buttons (because our UI specifiers don't use
browser user and don't care about GMail).

As a result we get lots of bugs complaining about this behavior.
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5130

there are probably 20 or so internal bugs for this issue. I'm pretty
sure that makes it one of our highest reported bugs.

In short, there's no way to get any of this right. Google apparently
does expect localized buttons
<https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5704> but in some cases the
buttons they expect are not the labels they want. We've had reports
where the gmail instructions mention OK/Cancel and the user had
localized (Yes/No) buttons .
===

The problem is that there's basically no way to properly frame such a
thing. If the user agent is using Portuguese but the Browser Content
is using English, then you're going to have to have something where
there's a language mix in the content area. Any transition here will
be rough.

Trying to assume how the string is formatted or trying to guess which
strings describe the given buttons/actions by doing parsing is going
to fail.

OTOH, a User Agent could e.g. stick an error case into an information
banner (typically the thing at the top of the page which is not part
of the content area).