Re: HTML version issue summary?

L. David Baron wrote:
> On Wednesday 2007-04-25 06:28 -0400, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>> we should be giving
>> them a mechanism that both allows pure standards-based documents to have
>> the best support available
> 
> I don't think (based on [1] and other statements) that Microsoft
> would support such a mechanism if any significant number of Web
> pages actually used it, since some of them would break if Microsoft
> supported the mechanism.

  I'm not understanding you (in part because you reference a message
that's several pages long rather than giving a quote). How does
downgrading the rendering of HTML5-compliant documents prevent breakage?
It's breakage in and of itself.

>> while allowing bug compatibility modes that
>> are clearly identified and specific to a user agent rather than a spec.
> 
> So you want the W3C to endorse a mechanism to entrench existing
> browser monopolies by requiring newcomers to reverse engineer the
> bugs in every version of every browser (rather than in just the
> leading version of the leading browser) in order to enter the
> market?

   I'm proposing that documents using bug compatibility be identified as
such. The simple sad fact is that once enough pages depend on bug
compatibility with a certain version of IE, other vendors will have to
reverse-engineer the rendering and behavior anyway. Providing a means of
identifying pages as depending on a specific browser's bugs will not
encourage this. If anything, it will discourage such behavior because it
brings the behavior into the consciousness of authors.

   Furthermore, |bugmode| liberates Microsoft from waiting until the
next doctype switch or version comes out before they improve their
standards support. Also, absolute perfect HTML5 support need not justify
a bug compatibility mode. One would only need to introduce such a mode
if failing to account for the relevant bugs causes a hardship on
vendors. If a vendor doesn't feel that a bug compatibility mode is worth
supporting, they can simply ignore the |bugmode| value entirely and
treat the document as using compliant HTML5 rendering and behavior.

Received on Friday, 27 April 2007 02:31:09 UTC