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public-html-comments posting from: Bert Bos <bert@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/mid/201108082100.34840.bert@w3.org
[[ A personal comment on http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD- html5-20110525/interactive-elements.html#the-details-element The DETAILS element (finally!) introduces the traditional hypertext feature of expanding text (stretch text) into HTML. However, there are two problems. Current CSS cannot express the desired behavior of the DETAILS element. Although there have been proposals in the past, none have yet been published by the CSS WG and the HTML WG hasn't asked the CSS WG for this feature either. Putting DETAILS in a last-call document when the corresponding CSS isn't even a WD yet seems a bit premature. Moreover, all the (informal) proposals in CSS so far have dealt with collapsing elements where the parts to show and the parts to hide were elements or attributes (e.g., LI elements or TITLE attributes). Maybe it is possible to invent pseudo-elements for the collapsible content of the DETAILS element, but it is probably better to add a real element, e.g.: <DETAILS><SUMMARY></SUMMARY><BODY></BODY></DETAILS>. At least the choice of mark-up needs further investigation and should be coordinated with the CSS WG. (HTML has always had a similar problem with the DT/DD pair. CSS had to invent 'compact' and 'run-in' to deal with the absence of a DI element to group related DT and DD elements together, but it still cannot solve the case where two or more DTs belong to a single DD. Nobody can be blamed for that mark-up, however, because it was invented before CSS. But now that CSS exists, HTML has to be designed to match it.) ]]
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, 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>. Status: Rejected Change Description: no spec change Rationale: Our view is that CSS should make simple markup constructs easy to style rather than requiring more complex structures. Furthermore, CSS so far has not addressed styling of controls in general and it seems far more likely the XBL / shadow DOM proposals are going to solve that issue.