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

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 1:45 AM, Tim Leverett <zzzzbov at gmail.com> wrote:

> >> 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.
>


Actually, there's a good point: I would actually add this: if <main> or an
element with @role="main" exist on the page, there is no need to run the
Scooby-Doo algorithm and that element can just be chosen as the <main>
element.

Silvia.