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Bug 7374 - legend as child of details, figure is unstylable and thus unusable
Summary: legend as child of details, figure is unstylable and thus unusable
Status: VERIFIED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P2 major
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: NE, NoReply
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-08-19 22:12 UTC by Bruce Lawson
Modified: 2010-10-04 14:28 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description Bruce Lawson 2009-08-19 22:12:25 UTC 
Legacy browsers cannot style legend as child of details or figure - see http://html5doctor.com/legend-not-such-a-legend-anymore/ 

Because of this, authors will almost certainly not use them.

Tests re-using caption, label failed (see http://remysharp.com/2009/08/12/saving-figure-detail/). 

One option is redefining header so it can be the "legend".

Alternatively a new element - <description>? <c>? should be specified.
Comment 1 Maciej Stachowiak 2009-08-20 02:13:03 UTC 
We're otherwise interested in implementing new HTML5 elements in WebKit, but this issue is blocking us from doing <details> or <figure>. We may fix <legend> parsing soon, but we'll be hesitant to add <figure> or <details> until other browsers have this fixed.
Comment 2 Remy Sharp 2009-08-20 07:49:02 UTC 
As an author, the legacy issues linked to the <legend> element are too big to overcome (or at least so far in all our testing), and the <figure> and <details> are valuable additions to the markup language.

I would like to see support from vendors to find/propose an alternative to the <legend> element as this will work across all browsers.  I've been through a lot of the tests (Bruce references my blog posts) so it's safe to say even fixing <legend> in future browsers sadly isn't enough to allow authors to start using <figure> and <details>

What, if any, are the objects to the two suggestions Bruce has?

> Alternatively a new element - <description>? <c>? should be specified.
Comment 3 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2009-09-15 11:15:51 UTC 
Used <dt>/<dd>.
Comment 4 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-03-14 14:49:46 UTC 
This bug predates the HTML Working Group Decision Policy.

If you are satisfied with the resolution of this bug, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
  http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

This bug is now being moved to VERIFIED. Please respond within two weeks. If this bug is not closed, reopened or escalated within two weeks, it may be marked as NoReply and will no longer be considered a pending comment.