326369 - Drop support for <isindex>

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: DOM: Core & HTML, defect)

Description

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

According to my study of one billion Web pages, less than 0.0013% of pages use the <isindex> element. In fact, so few pages use it that it didn't appear on my top 1000 most-used elements list, meaning it was used less than <side_ads>, <preform>, <titolo>, <bdbereich>, <org>, <cunet>, <l1>, <hot:trolley>, and numerous other bogus elements.

<isindex> has numerous bugs, and Mozilla's support for it differs from Safari's,  IE's, and Opera's.

I would like to drop support for parsing <isindex> specially in HTML5. If it turns out that <isindex> _is_ in fact used, then we'll find out about it soon and can change the HTML5 spec so that it is clear how it should be implemented.

Comment 1

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

(o195531, w7139)

Comment 2

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

If 0.0013% of one billion pages use isindex that means that we'd break 13000 pages by dropping support for isindex. I'd rather not do that without having a good reason.

Seems like isindex works fairly well as it stands, the only issue is that we don't support the action attribute, and that css doesn't work. I wouldn't be entierly opposed the idea to do what IE (and possibly other browsers) do and rather then having a real <isindex> element output markup that amounts to the same thing. That would also fix bug 93795 which is not about the isindex element.

Comment 3

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

Less than 0.013%, not 0.013%. (Due to the way I did the survey, the cut-off limit was at 0.013%.) A separate survey I became aware of last night, which checked about 150000 pages, found around 0.005% (7 pages) with <isindex>.

I'm happy to make HTML5 do what IE does (in fact I've basically already specced it, it's just comment out right now). However, if we can get away with dropping support altogether, I'd rather do that -- hence this bug.

Comment 4

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

(er, 0.0013%, not 0.013%. And yes, the smaller survey had a bigger proportion of sites with <isindex>, which may have been due to sample bias; the point was just to clear up that it was definitely more than 0 sites, i.e. that <isindex> is definitely used, just not much.)

Comment 5

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

One alternative is to drop it from the HTML5 spec and leave it up to those browser vendors that care support it anyway.

I am uncomfortable dropping support for this element, aweful as it is. But i'd welcome any changes that simplify its implementation.

Comment 6

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

No, dropping support from it in HTML5 and having people support it anyway is not an option.

I'll put <isindex> in the spec. Thanks for the feedback!

Comment 7

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Maybe <isindex> could be implemented in xbl (or am I saying something stupid here?)?