Re: The argument for |bugmode| (was Re: If we have versioning, it should be in an attribute, not the doctype)

2007/4/19, Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>:
>
> It would really help if you would actually do some research about (or
> at least listen to) what authors actually want, instead of being
> presumptuous.  There have been many web developers, including myself,
> saying (both on and off list) that they want an always-standards mode
> option.  Every single one that I have discussed this issue with off
> list strongly objects to your plan to perpetuate every bug you ever
> release and require explicit opt ins for nearly every new browser
> version.  I will try to get feedback from many more developers
> concerning this issue and make it available to you as evidence for my
> arguments.

I think that Chris has enough evidence about how much web authors know
what they want when they set their pages to standars mode and blamed
MS for the bug fixes of IE7.

Let's analyze the situation:
You've built a web page, it's rendered correctly and works properly in
all the current browsers.
IE.next is released with a new standards mode, there are some possibilities:

1.Your page did relied on a bug and it's fixed in the new IE.
1.a If the opt-in is automatic for every new release then your page
now is broken and you must check and fix it.
1.b If you must set the opt-in for the new standards mode then your
page will remain fine until you add the opt-in and fix the problems.

2. Your page didn't relied on any bug fixed in IE.next. No matter if
there's an opt-in or not, no matter if there's a new Standards mode or
not, everything works fine and everybody is happy.

So you only have a problem if the opt-in for the new mode is automatic
because in that case you must go and fix your page before the customer
gets annoyed because his page is broken. You say: "Fine, I'll do the
checks as soon as IE.next is released", but in that case you can also
just add the opt-in code in that moment, check if everything is fine
and fix the problems, but this time you can schedule when you want to
move the pages to the new standards mode instead of having to do when
the customer calls you annoyed with his broken page.

Received on Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:19:09 UTC