Re: HTML5 vs content type sniffing

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008, Stefan Eissing wrote:
> 
> From http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1144794177&count=1
> "Unfortunately, we're now at a stage where browsers are continuously having to
> reverse-engineer each other to determine why they are handling content
> differently. A browser can't afford to render any less content than a browser
> with more market share, because otherwise users won't switch, and the new
> browser will not be adopted."
> 
> By that argument, browsers with largest market share would profit from 
> changing their content sniffing rules continously. Hmm, somthing is 
> missing here...

The browser the largest market share is already deployed; its behaviour 
can't be changed. The next version of the browser with the largest market 
share has no market share. That's one of the reasons Microsoft developed 
their new <meta> tag that requires pages to opt-in to particular sets of 
bugs -- they want to guarentee that when they release IE8, it can render 
exactly everything that IE7 can render. If IE8 had different behaviour 
than IE7, then people wouldn't adopt it.

Now, Microsoft are obviously taking this to an extreme that I think is 
beyond necessary, but hopefully you understand why it makes no sense to 
say that "browsers with largest market share would profit from changing 
their content sniffing rules continously".

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Wednesday, 30 January 2008 22:43:22 UTC