On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 7:33 AM, David Karger <kar...@mit.edu> wrote: > Yes, we could, but it doesn't address the two objections I raised to data- > prefix: > 1. it isn't actually a data attribute, so prefixing with data seems odd > (appearance; minor)
You seem to have mentally associated the data-* attributes with Microdata. There is no connection between them. In fact, it's impossible for Microdata to use the data-* attributes at all. data-* attributes are for private script data that is, for whatever reason, more convenient to attach directly to a DOM node than to hold in a JS structure. Wanting the data's link to DOM nodes to survive serialization is a good reason. > 2. there's no way to guarantee someone else won't use the same data-exhibit > prefix, causing incompatibilities (functionality; major) In practice, the risk of prefix collisions has turned out to be minimal in many real-world collections, such as jQuery plugins. We expect the same to apply here. For maximum robustness, simply write your library with the ability to accept a different prefix, so that if a collision does occur the author can work around it. ~TJ