- From: Matthew Raymond <mattraymond@earthlink.net>
- Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:33:45 -0400
- To: public-html@w3.org
L. David Baron wrote: > On Wednesday 2007-04-25 06:28 -0400, Matthew Raymond wrote: >> we should be giving >> them a mechanism that both allows pure standards-based documents to have >> the best support available > > I don't think (based on [1] and other statements) that Microsoft > would support such a mechanism if any significant number of Web > pages actually used it, since some of them would break if Microsoft > supported the mechanism. I'm not understanding you (in part because you reference a message that's several pages long rather than giving a quote). How does downgrading the rendering of HTML5-compliant documents prevent breakage? It's breakage in and of itself. >> while allowing bug compatibility modes that >> are clearly identified and specific to a user agent rather than a spec. > > So you want the W3C to endorse a mechanism to entrench existing > browser monopolies by requiring newcomers to reverse engineer the > bugs in every version of every browser (rather than in just the > leading version of the leading browser) in order to enter the > market? I'm proposing that documents using bug compatibility be identified as such. The simple sad fact is that once enough pages depend on bug compatibility with a certain version of IE, other vendors will have to reverse-engineer the rendering and behavior anyway. Providing a means of identifying pages as depending on a specific browser's bugs will not encourage this. If anything, it will discourage such behavior because it brings the behavior into the consciousness of authors. Furthermore, |bugmode| liberates Microsoft from waiting until the next doctype switch or version comes out before they improve their standards support. Also, absolute perfect HTML5 support need not justify a bug compatibility mode. One would only need to introduce such a mode if failing to account for the relevant bugs causes a hardship on vendors. If a vendor doesn't feel that a bug compatibility mode is worth supporting, they can simply ignore the |bugmode| value entirely and treat the document as using compliant HTML5 rendering and behavior.
Received on Friday, 27 April 2007 02:31:09 UTC