There is a bug posted (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8191) about the 
implementation of DOMAttrModified events. The implementation is quite far along 
and there are many posts begging for it, but it is stalled because of one 
comment (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8191#c17) which is opposed to 
it on the grounds that it would be slow and buggy, and that there is an 
alternative proposal.

I'm interested in this issue because of WebGL. There is currently an 
implementation of a subset of X3D in WebGL (http://x3dom.org), which allows you 
to add a 3D scene as a hierarchy of nodes rendered by WebGL. They have an 
example of using mutation events to allow the DOM to change the attributes of 
nodes in the hierarchy and have that redraw the rendered scene. That's just one 
of the many uses of mutation events. Others are sprinkled throughout the bug 
log.

I don't think the discussion here should be whether or not mutation events a A 
Good Thing or not. They are being put to good use in Firefox already and they 
are part of DOM Level 2 already. The question should be whether they would add 
value to WebKit without penalizing performance when they are not used. I think 
there is enough evidence to say that they would be useful for many purposes. 
And from a cursory look at the patch it appears that, while there would be 
overhead in doing the checks, it would be fairly minor unless an event were 
actually attached to an attribute. And more might be done to short circuit 
earlier and further reduce the overhead. But I haven't actually tried the patch 
to see what the baseline overhead is.

If we reach consensus that we should add this feature, I would be happy to get 
some numbers about the overhead.

-----
~Chris
cmar...@apple.com




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