RE: IE8 incompatibility issues (was: Re: Issue: IE 8 adds new DOM Properties for ARIA -- not compatible with other impls)

Anne van Kesteren [mailto:annevk@opera.com] wrote:
>In IE8 you can do
>   element.ariaDisabled = true
>This is not possible in any other browser. In other browsers you are
>required to do
>   element.setAttribute("aria-disabled", "true")

Yup, that's clear now.  (To be more clear - the latter works in IE as well.)

>So if people use the former it will only work in IE8. Also, the idea was
>that ARIA scripts would work for older browsers as well as AT could simply
>read the DOM. If you introduce DOM attributes (such as ariaDisabled) this
>whould no longer be true.

That sounds like "we should never introduce DOM attributes again, and everyone should just always use getAttribute()?"

>> Yeah, I see that, and I've been thinking about that very issue.  Not
>> clear to me if Opera is happy if we simply make it so a standards-mode
>> DOCTYPE is necessary, as some of the invective is still demanding
>> removal of IE7 compatibility altogether.
>
>We're not happy with documentMode, but making X-UA-Compatible work just
>for standards mode would be an improvement. Just like doing IE8 mode by
>default is an improvement.

That sounds like a no.

-Chris