Why aren't some technically serializable input properties serializable?

Question

Serializable property is defined as:

• When you set a property of the element, it will be reflected in serialization queries such as getAttribute an

Answer 1

value and checked properties do not correspond to HTML attributes so they cannot be serialized to HTML. As to why a defaultX property maps to the x attribute, I'm not sure. The alternative, a property x mapping to the x attribute and having another property such as currentX to represent the current value, seems slightly less intuitive because in general a script is going to need the current value more often than the default value.

Answer 2

The Specification for input elements defines the exact behaviour. Start reading from here (before that, the DOM interface, attributes and types are defined).

Concise summary (value is defined similarly to checked, so for brevity, I'm going to explain value only).

The "property" value reflects value def,
the "attribute" value reflects the value content attribute def.

• The attribute defines the default value property ^(ref). This value is also reflected def by the defaultValue property (ref).
• When the value attribute is set, then the value property changes (ref) *.

That was worded very concisely. I've skipped an important detail. The specification is very clear at this point, so I'll just quote the dirty value flag section:

Each input element has a boolean dirty value flag. The dirty value flag must be initially set to false when the element is created, and must be set to true whenever the user interacts with the control in a way that changes the value.

The value content attribute gives the default value of the input element. When the value content attribute is added, set, or removed, if the control's dirty value flag is false, the user agent must set the value of the element to the value of the value content attribute, if there is one, or the empty string otherwise, and then run the current value sanitization algorithm, if one is defined.