Re: A Concrete Example for the HTML Versioning Debate

Sorry, I meant to send this to both Ian and the list so I'm re-sending

On 4/17/07, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 17 Apr 2007, Jeff Schiller wrote:
> >
> > Now I know that my example is probably pretty contrived, but at least
> > in this instance, it seems there is no way, as Ian says in [7] to
> > "absolutely ensure that HTML5 is compatible with all today's content"
> > because different browsers did different things and "today's content"
> > may have relied on one browser or the other browser's behavior.
>
> But does it? That's what matters. Is there content today that _relies_ on
> the "_parent" value being ignored when placed inside an <object>?
>
> If not, then we can change the behaviour safely. If there is, then Firefox
> and Opera are likely breaking those pages, and we should change the spec.
>

I don't think this is what you intended by this - but it sounds like
it's ok to break content relying on Firefox and Opera behavior but not
to break content relying on IE behavior.

Again, I know this one specific example is really only hypothetical
because I don't have resources to look at every single web page out
there to determine what percentage relies on Brand X or Y
or Z behavior.  But I guess I was trying to illustrate that such
situations do exist and how will you know you've researched and
captured them all?

And even if you can be reasonably confident - what is the harm in
introducing a "5" into the DOCTYPE somewhere?  If HTML6 actually ends
up being perfectly backwards compatible with HTML5, then I don't see a
harm in putting a "6" in the DOCTYPE when it gets released - if things
are truly backwards compatible, then it just means that anything 5 or
higher in the DOCTYPE means "the one true and pure standards mode for
all browsers", but it does give a hint to web authors/maintainers that
this content might have some features that were introduced in HTML6.

Received on Wednesday, 18 April 2007 04:58:08 UTC