On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 3:51 AM, Dean Edwards <dean.edwa...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 03/10/2009 03:38, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote: >> >> Agreed, but<details> won't be usable at all in modern browsers >> (without hacking support in via js) until everyone updates. > > That's the whole point of this thread. We are specifying something that > won't be usable for years. Let's make the spec better so that we can use > <details> sooner.
But we won't be able to, really. As it stands, <details> doesn't "work" in any of the modern browsers. You are forced to use js to hack the toggling functionality in. IE6 and IE7 are slightly more broken, in that they require a relatively invasive script hack to get them to the same level of not-working that all the other browsers have. If we mint a new element, we pay the costs of adding yet another vaguely-heading element to add to the dozen+ we already have in the language, and what's the benefit? IE6 and IE7 will require a less invasive hack to get them to the same level of not-working that all the other browsers have. I can definitely understand why it's felt that that's not sufficient benefit to justify it. No modern browser gets anything out of the deal, only a pair of legacy browsers that are, finally, on their way out. And we'd be saddled with still more naming confusion regarding which of the dozen elements is appropriate in <details> as opposed to <figure>, <table>, <section>, etc. despite them all serving roughly the same purpose. A permanent cost to solve a temporary problem that will disappear on its own, and one that doesn't even *need* solving - the only benefit is that you get to change your toggle scripts to look for <details> rather than <div class="toggle"> sooner. I wanna use <details> soon too - it gives me the warm fuzzies for some reason even if I have to hack the functionality in myself. But I can accept waiting until IE7 is irrelevant. I'm going to be doing that anyway for a number of other HTML5 features. ~TJ