[whatwg] Proposal for a widget tag

[Peter Beverloo]

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 17:17, Schalk Neethling
<schalk at ossreleasefeed.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
>
>
> I have watched one video after the other, and read articles just the same. I
> know we are all unsure when to use section and when to use article. But
> marking up something as simple as a blogroll as an article? This really
> makes no semantic sense to me.
>
>
>
> Therefore I suggest the addition of the widget tag. Below is the most
> obvious use case and makes much more sense to me. Thoughts?
>
>
>
> <section>
>
>      <widget id=”blogroll”>
>
>
>
>     </widget>
>
>     <widget id=”search”>
>
>
>
>     </widget>
>
> </section>
>
>
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Schalk Neethling

What advantages would <widget> have over <section>, <article> or
simply a grouping <div>? I fail to see why <widget id="search"> would
make significantly more sense than <div id="search">, or even a
fieldset (because that's what a search-area usually consists of). Same
goes for blog-roll, why not simply use an <ol> element?

There has been a lot of discussion about the new elements lately,
their use-cases and rationales, not only about <section> and
<article>, but also the <aside> element. Before starting yet another
discussion you might want to include several use-cases, advantages of
the new element (also in terms of accessibility) and define how it's
going to improve semantics in general. The term "widget" can be very
widely interpreted, as a widget technically can contain anything, how
is that going to make choosing a sectioning element easier?

Peter