Re: Versioning and html[5]

Mihai Sucan wrote:
> I believe Microsoft must not involve the HTML WG in their effort of 
> improving IE. Just provide your opt-ins: don't ask for the spec to 
> provide them. *If* the spec *happens* to have something you can also use 
> as an opt-in, then just go ahead and use it. This can be the <!DOCTYPE 
> html>. But, guys, don't force web developers use opt-ins that break the 
> other UAs (like <!DOCTYPE html5>). Web developers also want an opt-in 
> for existing HTML4 documents.
> 
> Using something like the IE conditional comments sounds good for me.

No, absolutely not!  Do not force authors to use UA-specific opt-ins 
like conditional comments just to get the most standards compliant 
behaviour.  That's equivalent to browser sniffing, and we all know how 
much of a mess that turned out to be.  That way lies madness; please do 
not force the web development community go down that path again!

<!DOCTYPE html> should trigger the same standards mode as existing 
DOCTYPEs, and that should always be the most standards compliant mode. 
Authors that use such DOCTYPEs have already implicitly opted in to the 
latest standard, don't force them to keep changing that opt-in method ad 
infinitum.

Chris Wilson seems to have the fallacious notion Firefox, Opera, Safari 
and other browsers can implement the HTML5 spec and be compatible with 
the web, yet IE can't implement the *same* spec without significantly 
breaking it.  That is just completely illogical.

As as been stated many times in this thread (though, it clearly bears 
repeating since Chris doesn't seem to understand):

   *if something in the spec can't be implemented without
    breaking compatibility, we should fix the spec!*

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Received on Friday, 13 April 2007 15:44:13 UTC