[webkit-dev] Adding <main> element to WebCore

[Michael[tm] Smith]

Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org>, 2012-11-29 19:10 -0800:

> Have other browser vendors implemented this feature or have shown their
> commitments to implement this feature? Or better yet, have we seen anyone
> using the element?

No, nobody has implemented <main> yet.

But we all know there are gazillions of existing Web pages marked up with
<div class=main> and <div class=content>. And going forward, developers
everywhere every minute of every day are marking up new content with those
or some other explicit indicators of what the main content of the page is.
And they'll keep doing that. The difference this would bring is that
instead of them continuing to be limited just to ad-hoc ways to do that,
we'd have a standard way they could could mark it up.

So I think the practical view that's driving support for <main> is very
much in keeping with the same "Pave the Cowpaths" design principle that's
among the set of principles that've been driving a lot of the work we've
all been doing together on standards for the platform for the last 8+ years
now (when the work started to become refocused in the right direction) --

  http://www.w3.org/TR/html-design-principles/#pave-the-cowpaths

"When a practice is already widespread among authors, consider adopting it
rather than forbidding it or inventing something new."

  --Mike

-- 
Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike