- From: Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>
- Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:23:04 +1000
- To: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>
- CC: public-html@w3.org
Henri Sivonen wrote: > On Apr 15, 2007, at 09:20, Lachlan Hunt wrote: >> Plenty of authors have enough trouble trying to understand why >> changing or removing the DOCTYPE can result in completely different >> rendering and behaviour of scripts, and that won't be improved by >> introducing more modes. > > Indeed, but the conclusion I draw is that on the scale of the Web, you > shouldn't assume competence or rational opt-in decision making. I don't. It would incredibly naive of me to think all authors can make rational decisions, but there are many of us who can our needs should hindered by those who can't. >> Give authors the choice. Let those authors who wish to lock >> themselves into a particular IE-frozen-bug-state specifically opt-in >> to using that version. But let the rest of us who want to make an >> informed decision to always use the *latest* standards mode do so. > > This may sound awfully elitist of me, but I don't think authors in > general are competent to make that choice. The inability of of some to make informed choices shouldn't take away our right to do so. > Therefore, considering that the approach of freezing bug sets is bad > as seen with Word processors, we should work towards giving authors no > choice but to live with browsers fixing bugs. Keep in mind that the default (i.e. no opt-in) would be the the right choice (always standards mode) if MS accepted my proposal. > That is, the real fix I see in building a perception that bugs are unstable. Many have been pushing that argument for years when trying to promote standards compliance and validation. Microsoft seems intent on promoting the idea that all bugs are stable and can be perpetually relied upon. -- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/
Received on Sunday, 15 April 2007 23:23:30 UTC