Re: XHTML, attribute minimization, and deployed UAs

On Sat, 27 Mar 1999, Todd Fahrner wrote:

> I hope I'm wrong about this:

In general, no, but not all the details:

> XHTML documents containing formerly minimizable attributes don't work in
> current browsers.

Some attributes do in some browsers. My (minimal) testing shows some
browsers handling some of these cases properly.

> In HTML, these constructs are common:
> 
> <input checked>
> <option selected>
> <ul compact>
> <textarea wrap>   (ns extension)
> <td nowrap>       (deprecated, but needed even in IE5 since it still doesn't
>                    implement CSS1)
> 
> In XHTML, however, these must become:
> 
> <input checked="checked">
> <option selected="selected">
> <ul compact="compact">
> <textarea wrap="wrap">
> <td nowrap="nowrap">

Note that these are also perfectly legal HTML constructs, and have
been all along. Any browser that fails to treat the second set and the
first set the same is broken.

> ...and in my testing with today's browsers, this syntax fails to deliver the
> hoped-for results. I've tried adding whitespace in various places (a la <br
> />) without success.
[...]
> Again, I hope I'm wrong. But if I'm not, shouldn't this nasty fact be noted
> in sections 4.2, 5, and Appendix C of the WD?

The nasty fact that current browsers are buggy, and can't handle
perfectly valid - if uncommon - HTML constructs? That seems sort of
pointless.

I put <URL: http://www.phone.net/home/mwm/bugs.html > up years
ago. While things are much better than they were when I first put it
up, most browsers still have problems.

	<mike

Received on Saturday, 27 March 1999 18:46:33 UTC