Re: Proposed Design Principles review

Hi-

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Apr 2007, Dannii wrote:
>> Do we want to not break conforming pages only, or all pages? I think it 
>> should say that we should only attempt to prevent breaking good pages.
> 
> According to a study I did last September, about 93% of pages on the Web 
> are non-conforming at a purely syntactic level. So I think we are forced 
> to consider non-conforming pages in our consideration of whether or not we 
> can change legacy page renderings.
> 
> Consider that microsoft.com, google.com, and cnn.com are all 
> non-conforming today. I don't think we could even consider a change that 
> made browsers change their renderings of those pages.

I certainly can't speak for Microsoft, but from what Chris Wilson has 
said, I'd expect that they would agree with this need not to break even 
non-conforming pages (as do I).

How we go about this is another matter.  I'm convinced that a version 
attribute is the way to go, while others contend that the language 
itself must incorporated (almost) all the features of past implementations.

To me, the idea of a version that clearly identifies that the page will 
be treated strictly according to the HTML5.0 standard, and which will 
produce visible problems if not coded correctly, gives us leeway to be 
less inclusive of past quirks.  If the language is designed correctly 
(and I have no doubt this group could do so), then the leaner syntax 
would still degrade gracefully in older browsers.


Regards-
-Doug

Received on Friday, 27 April 2007 04:00:39 UTC