[whatwg] Support for page transitions

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 7 Jun 2011, Mikko Rantalainen wrote:
> 
> I think that web application user experience could be improved if
> transitions between pages were supported.

This is more of a presentational issue, so it's probably best to first try 
to address it using CSS. I recommend suggesting it on www-style. I haven't 
added anything to the HTML spec for this at this time.


> I think that this could be sensible to have in HTML instead of just in 
> the CSS (or some other method) because it's possible that other software 
> but just the styling system could use the information about target type 
> for links and buttons.

I think the logical way to do it would be to annotate the link types 
(which you can do today using rel=""), and to then have the CSS-driven 
transition effects parameterised from those link annotations.


On Thu, 9 Jun 2011, Mikko Rantalainen wrote:
> 
> For example, if I have a wizard that logically forks to two different 
> paths, then rel="next" should not be used. Or at least 
> http://microformats.org/wiki/existing-rel-values describes "next" as 
> following:
> 
> "Refers to the next document in a linear sequence of documents. User 
> agents may choose to preload the "next" document, to reduce the 
> perceived load time."
> 
> Notice the word "linear". I think rel="maybe-next" would describe what 
> I'm thinking. Or perhaps rel="next" should be changed to mean "maybe 
> next".
> 
> The same applies to "prev" but a bit less so (usually there's only one 
> previous place to go). For example, a wizard could have a button to go 
> to the previous form and an another button to go back to the first (or 
> previous fork point) form in the currently taken path through forms. 
> Logically both are previous pages to current page but again, the series 
> is not linear.

If this is a use case that people want to address, the way to do it would 
be to demonstrate an interest from implementors and then to fix the 
definition on the wiki. The definitions don't have to be set in stone; 
they should evolve as needed while taking into account existing content.


> Also note that rel="next" is not currently allowed for submit buttons at 
> all. So either rel="next" must be relaxed here, too, or we need a new 
> attribute. I'm fine with either choice.

The relationship between a page and a page obtained through form 
submission is always "it's the page that was generated from the form 
submission"; I'm not sure it makes sense to have rel="" on buttons.

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