Re: The argument for |bugmode|

Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> At 00:15 +0300 UTC, on 2007-04-19, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>> If you would like the switch to be marked non-conforming, do you
>> expect Web designers to accept it?
> 
> Speaking for the Web Repair Initiative, I think that would be awful. We're
> trying to improve authoring tools, which means amongst other things that we
> would like to see authoring tools include conformance checkers. IMO the ideal
> conformance checker for such environments would be a simple two (maybe three)
> state icon, indicating conformance or not. If the authoring tool would be
> forced to generate invalid markup just to opt-in to IE's 'super mega really
> truly standards mode', that would mean the user would need to look at the
> *details* of the error reported for each and every page, because by just
> looking at the conformance checker's icon they can't know what it is
> flagging, just that it is flagging. (And for such conformance tools to ignore
> the IE opt-in switch would be unacceptable to require of them, because if the
> opt-in switch isn't specced, such tools have no reliable source to base on
> what the opt-in switch actually looks like. In fact, the authoring tool would
> need to allow the user to explicitly opt-in to IE's 'standards mode', so it
> does in fact need to know the correct syntax of the switch to be able to
> check its conformance.)

   I think you totally misunderstand the concept of |bugmode|. It
doesn't opt INTO standards mode. It opts OUT of standards mode. In other
 words, if you leave it off, or if the bug compatibility mode isn't
supported on your browser, you get standards mode by default. Therefore,
any page using |bugmode| has some probability of being invalid to begin
with because it depends on bugs in a user agent.

   Now, I would prefer that |bugmode| be standardized if only for the
sake of pages that rely on bug but would otherwise validate. That said,
it looks like Microsoft won't permit that.

> If we want the Web's interoperability to improve, we should make it easy for
> authors to produce quality code, not make it harder. A non-conforming IE
> opt-in switch is unacceptable.

   Since a version number isn't sufficient, and Microsoft won't accept a
standardized attribute, what other option is there?

Received on Thursday, 19 April 2007 11:17:39 UTC