Re: Versioning and html[5]

After thinking about it a bit more, I have to comment on "release often 
and advance aggressively" once more.

You said you couldn't change the implementation of a certain standard 
once it's used in the wild, because web developers rely on your 
bugginess. Good. Now releasing often doesn't really fix that. What would 
probably work better is if you would release only once and when all the 
relevant HTML/CSS/DOM/JS bugs are fixed for the <!DOCTYPE html> case. 
Let it take 2, 3 or more years. (In the meantime, you could of course 
release IE versions with UI improvements, backwards-compatible fixes for 
the known standards mode et al.) Some developers won't be happy, but 
eventually they could really love you. ;-)

As said, if you implement the standards, there won't be significant 
compatibility problems anymore. This works for CSS, JavaScript and DOM 
specifications, and I'm convinced that it'll work for HTML. (In case of 
need, there's still the possibility for conditional comments or bringing 
back version numbers in later specifications.)

I think the question is: Can you have multiple DOM and scripting 
architectures side by side, depending on what we call "rendering mode" 
today? (Or depending on the mime-type; you don't support 
application/javascript currently.)

--Dao

Chris Wilson schrieb:
> Dão Gottwald [mailto:dao@design-noir.de] wrote:
>> Chris Wilson schrieb:
>>>> - support <!DOCTYPE html> as always-the-latest-version,
>>> Not once it's widely used, as we will break back-compat.
>> You should be able to make two release cycles before this spec is done
>> (I don't even mean a recommendation) _and_ widely used. So this is
>> directly glued to the next point. If you manage to fix /most/ DOM and
>> CSS quirks not for standards/quirks mode but for <!DOCTYPE html> within
>> two release, which one should expect given Microsoft's resources and
>> your proclaimed commitment to adopt standards, you will be able to
>> escape the doom loop of backwards compatibility.
> 
> Possibly.  I still think it's smart to future-proof by saying "this content is HTML as of HTML5" rather than "this content is HTML".
> 
> -Chris

Received on Sunday, 15 April 2007 15:40:30 UTC