On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 3:08 PM, Peter Kasting <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 17 May 2011, Bjartur Thorlacius wrote: > > > Then why add an API when we've already got (IMO superior) declarative > > > markup? > > > > In the case of adding the API to the spec, because it's already > > implemented. As to why it was added to the browsers, no idea. > > > Certainly there's no declarative markup for IsSearchProviderInstalled(). > As for AddSearchProvider(), I know one reason it was added to Chrome was > explicitly to expose the "and make default" functionality. Of course one > could argue that a UA could give users the option to make any provider > default for whatever UI it exposes for the declarative case. But there are > a couple fine points worth mentioning: one is that since users rarely want > to make an engine default, adding that option to the UI all the time would > be even more annoying than adding "[ ] And set as my homepage" to whatever > UI is shown for "bookmark this page", and thus UAs may shy away from this > idea. Another is that engines may wish to explicitly request to be made > default in response to some explicit user action on the page, e.g. clicking > a "Make this my default search engine" button. Creating this UI and making > it work smoothly is difficult with the existing mechanisms. > > Note that I am not the one who proposed, specced, or implemented this in > Chrome; I'm just trying to convey a few things that seem apparent to me as > another Chrome UI engineer :) > Just to clarify, it was clear that many including other browsers didn't suppport the asDefault parameter, and Google Chrome no longer supports it. dave
