[whatwg] maincontent element spec updated and supporting data provided

Steve Faulkner faulkner.steve at gmail.com
Thu Oct 18 15:55:49 PDT 2012


hi Mat,

The RICG published a stand-alone “use cases” document a while back (
> http://usecases.responsiveimages.org ), to facilitate work on the
> extension specification. Is anything like this in the works for
> `main`/`content`/`maincontent`, at present? Seems like it would be a good
> next step!
>

right, will work on it.

Hixie, can you point me to the uses cases developed for adding
header/footer/section/article/aside etc? As it would be good to have some
related source material to work from. I had a look on the WHATWG wiki and
serached the WHATWG mail archive and couldn't find anything.


regards
SteveF

On 18 October 2012 22:27, Mathew Marquis <mat at matmarquis.com> wrote:

>
> On Oct 18, 2012, at 2:36 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
>
> >
> > I just wanted to make sure everyone is clear that this <maincontent> part
> > is not part of the HTML specification, and is not a WHATWG specification.
> > We have previously had miscommunications about this kind of thing, e.g.
> > with responsive images, where there was some expectation from some people
> > that if a proposal got written up, it would be adopted. This is not the
> > case; what decides whether a proposal is adopted or not is whether it has
> > real use cases and compelling reasoning.
>
> Off-topic, but just for the record: there was no expectation that the
> RICG’s proposal would simply be accepted wholesale, for obvious
> reasons—just that we would be able to collaborate with the WHATWG on it. It
> wouldn’t have made much sense for us to call it a “proposal” otherwise,
> after all. :)
>
> On-topic: the `main` class/ID pattern is an exceedingly common one, for
> sure. I use it all the time myself, in conjunction with `role="main"`.
>
> I was originally of the mind that the role of “primary content” was served
> by the first `article` element within the document, but where the first
> `article` just represents the first sectioned stand-alone content in the
> document, it could be something like an infographic — capable of
> functioning independent of the surrounding document, but not the entirety
> of the primary content. Given the clear meaning of the proposed element,
> the low barrier to adoption by web developers, and the potential benefits
> this could have in terms of syndication and accessibility: it certainly
> sounds interesting!
>
> The RICG published a stand-alone “use cases” document a while back (
> http://usecases.responsiveimages.org ), to facilitate work on the
> extension specification. Is anything like this in the works for
> `main`/`content`/`maincontent`, at present? Seems like it would be a good
> next step!
>
>



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