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

Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:
> Lachlan, do you have any evidence from the past, from when there have 
> been such changes, of people being against having a switch to retain the 
> previous rendering?

I am not so much against having a switch to select a previous rendering, 
as I am against being forced against my will into using such a switch 
without the option of choosing an always-standards mode.

Although I do not think adding an unbounded number of such modes in 
future versions of IE is wise, I'm ok with it on the condition that it 
does not adversely affect standards compliant authoring techniques and 
other browser vendors won't be forced to reverse engineer each one of 
those undocumented modes.  Unfortunately, however, there can be no 
guarantee that browser vendors won't be forced to do so in the future.

There is plenty of evidence that authors want to select the most 
standards compliant mode available.  e.g. Every time someone chooses a 
Strict DOCTYPE instead of a Transitional, they get standards mode 
instead of almost-standards mode.  Many even do so despite using 
deprecated features.

A lot of authors even avoid using deprecated features directly in favour 
of workarounds just to bypass validation errors, instead of just using a 
Transitional DOCTYPE (e.g. the target attribute and the various scripts 
to work around that).

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Received on Friday, 20 April 2007 08:08:29 UTC