- From: Bruce Boughton <bruce@bruceboughton.me.uk>
- Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 10:43:48 +0100
- To: Mihai Sucan <mihai.sucan@gmail.com>
- CC: Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>, public-html@w3.org
Mihai Sucan wrote: > > While I personally want a switch like this "always standards-mode", I > don't agree with the assumption "we are competent enough to make > informed decisions for ourselves". > > [..] The majority of web developers working in companies *will* make > use of this switch unknowingly of the consequences, and then they'll > blame IE [n] for breaking their pages (because they relied on some old > bugs). > To find themselves in this situation, they must first explicitly opt-in to HTML5 standards mode with <!DOCTYPE html>. When IE9 comes out and perhaps breaks their sites, they can then add the IE8 mode switch. If they were competent enough to find out about <!DOCTYPE html> they should be competent enough to find the mode switch if hand coding. I would not expect a programmer to program Java without referring to the API, so I don't see why we expect people hand-coding HTML not to refer to the spec. For those that don't hand code their HTML, it is important that tools vendors expose this option. However we handle the opt-in situation, it does require some knowledge from the author, and so long as this feature is clearly and prominently documented (both in the spec and in tutorials, web developer sites and tools) I don't think it is outlandish to expect authors to know this. I hope I do not appear elitist. I am not trying to be, but I don't think it is unreasonable to expect people to have to refer to the spec, Bruce
Received on Sunday, 15 April 2007 09:44:39 UTC