Is it bad practice to add non standard attributes to DOM elements? - HTML/Javascript [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Is it considered bad practice to use non-standard HTML attributes?

Hi folks,

I'm building a javascript library, the idea of which is to add functionality to various elements on page.

Easiest way for complete isolation would be to add a non standard attribute

e.g. <div special="true" >...</div>

Other alternatives are classes and onclick javascript.

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Any ideas?

Answer 1

HTML5 supports "data" type attributes, but in general for a modern day site, this would cause most sites to fail validation if they are going for any doctype other than HTML5.

So that would just be adding a barrier to entry for potential users of your library.

Answer 2

Don't do it. I've learned the hard way that this is not cross-browser. I had a jQuery-intensive app totally fail to function in Chrome because of this.