Re: Versioning and html[5]

I have a question/idea:

When IE.next comes out, why can't IE7 just hang around on users'  
computers? One of the problems with the IE7 upgrade was that it was  
all or nothing. There was no way for a user to flip back to IE6- 
dependent content.

Why does the opt-in have to be in the spec? There could be an easy-to- 
reach "legacy content mode" button in IE.next that can be used when a  
page doesn't render correctly  in it's new (hopefully) bug-free  
standards-mode.

If the problem is that IE.next must deal with the fact that authors  
haven't addressed the fact that some future version of IE might  
actually be fully standards-compliant, I don't think that forcing the  
HTML5 spec to cope is appropriate, or even going to help. If, for  
instance, IE.next has broken html5 support and authors code for that,  
then we fall right back into the same mess of serving different  
content to IE and everyone else.

And, how much breakage will there be if 1) The HTML5 spec is as  
compatible with current browsers' rendering as possible 2) IE.next  
renders this spec correctly  and 3) pulls generic rather than IE<=7  
specific content (by changing or removing its conditional comment  
parsing)

Wouldn't this breakage be mitigated by allowing users to manually  
fall back on IE7 when needed?

Cheers,

Matt Freels

Received on Saturday, 14 April 2007 11:01:09 UTC