Sending custom elements over the wire (was Re: [webkit-dev] XML Events in WebKit)

[Maciej Stachowiak]

Getting marginally off-topic for webkit-dev, but I don't mind having a  
bit of general web standards discussion here...

On Dec 8, 2007, at 8:05 AM, Antoine Quint wrote:

> On 8 déc. 07, at 01:14, Ian Hickson wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 7 Dec 2007, Antoine Quint wrote:
>>>
>>> XML Events basically come in handy when you want a generic markup- 
>>> based way to
>>> add event listeners for custom events. For instance, if XBL was  
>>> implemented in
>>> WebKit, and I had my own custom magic UI control implemented with  
>>> some custom
>>> XML element, [...]
>>
>> ...then you shouldn't be sending it over the wire, so it shouldn't
>> matter... (You shouldn't send custom, aka proprietary, vocabularies  
>> over
>> the wire, since you have no way to guarentee the end user can  
>> handle it.)
>
>
> We're drifting away from the original topic a bit, but I'm wondering  
> if such a statement would jeopardize the validity of the existence  
> of XBL, or if you see XBL as a technology for standalone, browser- 
> based application? Personally, I see no big problem using custom  
> grammars when XBL is available on the client.

XBL is a better solution than today's de facto approach to custom  
elements, <div class="something"> plus after-the-fact script hooks. It  
lets you avoid having semantically neutral <div> elements in the case  
where you want to make a custom widget that basically acts like an  
existing element with known semantics. For example, when making a  
custom button or checkbox with XBL, it's clearly better to bind to  
<button> or <input type="checkbox"> respectively than to <div  
class="button"> or <div class="checkbox">.

However, sometimes it is useful to package behavior and presentation  
that doesn't sensibly correspond to the semantics of any existing  
standard element. One example of this would be a tri-state checkbox.  
But it's likely there will always be application interaction elements  
that can't reasonably be expressed as a fancy version of a well-known  
control.

In this case you'll still have the option of <div> with a special  
class. And it is also technically feasible to use XML to bind to a  
custom element in the HTML namespace, or in XML a custom element in a  
custom namespace. I am not sure there is a material difference among  
these options. In each case there are no predefined semantics being  
expressed. But semantics could be added through widespread convention,  
as with microformats.

Regards,
Maciej