[whatwg] iframes with potential for independent navigation controls
Ian Hickson
ian at hixie.ch
Wed Aug 11 15:10:33 PDT 2010
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, Brett Zamir wrote:
>
> I would like to see attributes be added to allow iframes to have
> independent navigation controls, or rather, to allow a parent document
> to have ongoing access to the navigation history of its iframes (say to
> be informed of changes to their histories via an event) so that it could
> create such controls? I would think that the average user might suspect
> that their clicks would not necessarily be private if they were already
> in the context of another site, but if privacy would be of concern here
> (or security, though GET requests alone shouldn't alone be able to give
> access to sensitive data), maybe the user could be asked for permission,
> as with Geolocation.
>
> This really has I think wonderful potential.
>
> Especially but not exclusively for larger screens, one can envision, for
> example, a site which displays content in a table, with paragraphs being
> in one column, and commentary in another.
>
> If the commentary column uses say a wiki (or a comment feed/discussion
> thread), to keep track of resources and cross-references, insights,
> errata, etc. pertaining to a given paragraph or verse (e.g., for books,
> but also potentially for blog articles, etc.--anywhere people may wish
> to dissect in context), it would be desirable for one to be able to say
> edit content in one fixed iframe pane, follow links in another one
> (including to other domains), etc., all while keeping the original
> context of the table of content and iframes on screen, and allowing the
> user to go backward and forward in any pane independently (or possibly
> type in a URL bar for each iframe). One can even imagine ongoing chat
> discussions taking place within such a mosaic.
It's an interesting idea (the ability to ask for the browser to embed
controls, that is; we wouldn't be able to grant cross-domain access to
pages, since that would open all kinds of security problems). The best way
to proceed is to follow the steps described in the wiki:
http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#Is_there_a_process_for_adding_new_features_to_a_specification.3F
In particular, I think getting implementation experience would be critical
for such a feature. Do users get confused? Does just providing a set of UI
controls actually address the use cases, or do authors still need more?
That is the kind of questions we'd need answers to.
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
More information about the whatwg
mailing list