title: Can I store custom attributes in HTML DOM like a database record?
body: <p>When developing for browsers FF3 and IE6/7 with jQuery, are there any compatibility issues when setting custom attributes on HTML tags?</p>
  
  <p>First, I'm aware of jQuery's <code>data()</code> function and it essentially does what I want, but the data doesn't survive a <code>clone()</code> function.  This is an issue when using the jQuery UI draggable/droppable plugins because it clones DOM elements during a drag/drop.  For the purpose of this question, I need an alternative to <code>data()</code>.</p>
  
  <p>I want to persist data between drag/drop operations.  I want to be able to inject data into the DOM element that is moved during a drag/drop operation.  To do this, I can build HTML child elements to simulate a database record.  Quick experimentation shows that Firefox has no issues utilizing any attribute names I want to store fields of data.  However, the HTML 4 spec says that certain tags can only contain certain attribute names.  Will populating the DOM with nonstandard attributes cause incompatibility issues with the browsers I've mentioned?</p>