Re: HTML version issue summary?

On Tuesday 2007-04-24 18:16 -0700, David Hyatt wrote:
> Versioning is like a vendor-neutral opt-in hook.  Browsers can then  
> use their own opt-in hooks and use the vendor-neutral hook once they  
> are confident in their compliance with the spec.  Theoretically IE  
> might do something like this with my proposal:
> 
> IE 8 ships with partial HTML5 support, uses custom opt-in #1
> IE8.1 ships with more complete HTML5 support, uses custom opt-in #2
> IE9 is the point where MSFT decides they've nailed it, now they use  
> the HTML5 version as opt-in #3
> IE9.1 starts adding more features for future HTML versions or maybe  
> has to tweak existing HTML5 a tiny bit to deal with some quirks, uses  
> custom opt-in #4

I don't see how what Microsoft wants [1] has anything to do with
their level of compliance.  If they add an opt-in hook, it's going
to be something that isn't already used on the Web.  They won't make
something an opt-in hook that's already used on the Web, because
that will change the behavior of pages that have almost certainly
been tested against IE for Windows (in the version before it was an
opt-in hook).  (And, whatever the hook is, it will be copied from
pages tested on the early HTML5-supporting browsers into pages
tested only on a non-HTML5-supporting version of IE.)

In other words, what Microsoft wants is definitely *not*
vendor-neutral.

-David

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Apr/0612

-- 
L. David Baron                                <URL: http://dbaron.org/ >
           Technical Lead, Layout & CSS, Mozilla Corporation