Blanchard, Todd wrote:
Lachlan Hunt wrote:
Blanchard, Todd wrote:
What I want to know is: if the "cloned" node has an id
attribute, and id is meant to be unique, then how do we resolve
this conflict?
The ID attributes need to be duplicated in such cases, that's what
existing browsers do.
OK, I have to disagree with this - the id's MUST NOT be duplicated as
the end result is simply converting one kind of error to a different
kind of error. I'd also suggest that browsers should be NOISY about
bad HTML such that authors are encouraged to fix it (possibly through
some disable-able preference).
There are extensions available, such as the HTML tidy extension for
Firefox, which *will* alert the user of such mistakes. There are also
various tools available for browsers, such as the JavaScript console,
Venkman, the DOM inspector and many more that the author can make use of
to diagnose problems. I don't agree that anything should be added as a
hidden pref for this, that would just add bloat to the software the most
users won't need and provide nothing that existing tools don't already.
As it is now, site authors spend a great deal of time scratching
their heads trying to make sense of why things are acting oddly
Errors caused by the result of duplicate IDs either in the markup or
indirectly as a result of badly nested elements can be fixed by a quick
visit to the validator (or other conformance tool) or by making use of
any or all of those tools I mentioned above.
--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/