On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 10:12 PM, Olivier Forget <teleclim...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'd be interested in hearing more about what didn't work with that API by > both devs who tried to make use of it and the implementors too. > > For the record: web developers don't usually take advantage of additional > functionality that is provided by only one browser, or implemented in > differing unpolished ways by different browsers. When possible we take the > lowest common denominator approach to offer a consistent experience from > browser to browser, and to avoid spending resources writing code that only a > subset of users will be able to use anyways. > > What I'm saying is that the fact few devs worked with multiple ranges may not > be a reflection of the quality of the API, but rather that because it wasn't > implemented across browsers it wasn't worth from a cost-benefit point of view. > > And no I'm not saying the API is great either, just that saying "developers > won't do it" is not really fair to anybody.
It's not just that it was only implemented by one UA. It's also that even in Firefox, multiple-range selections practically never occur. The only way for a user to create them to to either Ctrl-select multiple things, which practically nobody knows you can do; or select a table column, which is also extremely uncommon; or maybe some other obscure ways. In evidence of this fact, Gecko code doesn't handle them properly either. Ehsan might be able to provide more details on this if you're interested.
