Re: The argument for |bugmode| (was Re: If we have versioning, it should be in an attribute, not the doctype)

2007/4/18, Chris Wilson <Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com>:
> I want to explicitly state - I neither asked for nor want the HTML WG to specify a "bugmode" attribute in HTML.  I expect bugward-compatibility markers to be IE-proprietary, and I hope we can get rid of them over time.  I DO want the HTML WG to recognize that they cannot be ripped out today (or for the next several years).
>
> -Chris
>
>
The problem that I see with a global opt-in method to render all the
page elements in Really Standard and have the Really Standard behavior
in Script and DOM and etc... is what will happen until most of the
people is able to upgrade their IE and get the new shiny browser.

With IE 6 and the quirks vs standard it was possible to start using
standard mode all the way because there wasn't any new version since
2001, so people did slowly upgrade to IE6, meanwhile NS4 died and most
of the UA was just IE, with IE5 dying, so it was possible to say
"we'll design with the new standards mode because it's more reliable,
easier to do cross-browser things and if people is still on IE5 we can
tell them to upgrade, it's been several years for the rest of the
world with IE6"

But now we can feel that the new versions won't take so long, and that
means that if a web author wants to use the Really Standards mode,
he'll screw all the current IE6 and IE7 customers.

You've stated that MS can't afford to make changes that break a
certain percentage of web pages, Do you expect web authors to say:
"Hey, you can use only IE.next because I'm using the new Really
Standards mode" ?

I don't.
I know that web authors will need to provide a page that works in IE6
for a long time, so I think that web authors will need to use
conditional comments all the way to address those previous versions,
and if you can create in CSS some vendor extension like it was
previously suggested:
@-msie8 { }
then it will make the migration easier.

You have already started using in IE the vendor prefix
(-ms-interpolation-mode) so you could try to use other new properties
to do the opt-in in a case by case bug fixing (example:
-ms-overflow:standardMode;)

Received on Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:10:35 UTC