[whatwg] A plea to Hixie to adopt <main>

[Tim Leverett]

>> Con: Adding a <main> element adds redundancy to the [role="main"]
attribute.
> I don't see why this is a con, if main is mapped to role=main in the
browser it means that authors won't have to. Also adding
aside/article/footer etc adds redundancy to the matching ARIA roles.

Redundancy tends to be a source of error if they get out of sync. If one
browser supports [role="main"] and another supports <main>, both would be
needed to provide compatibility. Obviously this is a bit contrived, as
browsers supporting <main> would likely also support [role="main"], but
older versions would not support <main> . Going forward, this would mean
that authors wanting to use <main> would have to use <main role="main"> for
backwards compatibility.

I could be wrong on this, but I was pretty certain that <article> and the
rest were supported by browsers before the ARIA roles model.

>> Con: Implementing the <main> element in a backwards compatible manner requires
JavaScript.
> it is/was the same for any of the new structural elements.

Yes, and that's a con for using any of the newer HTML5 elements over ARIA
roles.

> authors can use more granular elements within the <main> element, to
structure content, example:
> <main>
> <article/>
> <aside> advertisements</aside>
> <article/>
> </main>

Good point on the <aside> I hadn't thought of that.

☺


On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 6:43 AM, Ian Yang <ian at invigoreight.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 7:27 PM, Ian Yang <ian at invigoreight.com> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Tim Leverett <zzzzbov at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Personally, I'd rather see <main> be more about marking up content in
> >> general, such as in this example which is invalid given the current
> state
> >> of the spec:
> >> <article id=1>
> >>   <header />
> >>   <main />
> >>   <footer />
> >> </article>
> >> <article id=2>
> >>   <header />
> >>   <main />
> >>   <footer />
> >> </article>
> >>
> >> ...although this would probably fit better as a <content> element, and
> >> would require a whole other line of discussion that can wait for another
> >> day.
> >>
> >> ☺
> >>
> >
> > That's a good idea. We really need an element to wrap all the <p>s,
> <ul>s,
> > <ol>s, <figure>s, <table>s ... etc of a blog post.
> >
>
> I'm sorry, but I have to eat my above words.
>
> Previously I proposed that <main> being a sectioning element for a better
> document outline (
> https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=19591#c0). So the use
> of <main>s in all blog posts won't help improving the
> document outline.
>
>
> Regards,
> Ian Yang
>