[whatwg] New attributes would degrade better than new elements

[Eric Sh.]

> How does this relate to the question of adding element vs. adding
attributes?

I am saying that they also added <div> which is the most famous tag to
date(added in HTML 4), so maybe we should have used <tag type=div> and <tag
type=img> that way all browsers would support it no?

> They could do just the same with <div type=article>.

Don't you think that it rather lengthy way of saying the same thing?

> _I_ am not stupid, and I did not come to think of this earlier.

Did I say you were? All I said is that you are underestimating the knowledge
of the specification makers throughout the years.

>
>  What is the fear of adding new tags?
>>
>
> Compatibility with older browsers. It should not be broken without due
> cause.
>
>> They are backwards compatible in
>> that browsers that don't understand them can just ignore them.
>>
>
> That's exactly the point that causes the incompatibility: to a browser that
> does not recognize <nav> at all, your CSS settings for it are ignored and it
> isn't even rendered as a block by default.


It looks like you missed the part of http://ejohn.org/blog/html5-shiv/ where
it shows you that styling DOES work on browses without HTML 5 support.

And the number of browsers who do not support HTML 5 tags and have
javascript disabled is far too little in my opinion for any website to try
and support.

> b) if you regard IE6 as still relevant, you can additionally use a class
or id attribute (or keep it, if working with an existing document); on IE6,
they work for <div> but not for <nav> as the entire element is unknown.

If you create the element using javascript then the tag name IS known and
styleable.



>From what it looks like your "solution" only makes html documents bigger and
harder to write(not to mention the pains of css and attributes across
browsers), and also against the entire HTML history where the tag name is
used(almost always) to define it's contents and not one of it's attributes.

And the more time you keep having support for too old browsers the harder it
is for web developers to keep up with all browsers and advance the web and
make it better.


Do you think we should have elements like <menu> and <canvas> as <div
type=menu> and  <div type=canvas>?


And last thing - what can we do with browsers that already support this?
This is a major technical problem and you haven't said anything on this
front.