Re: Proposed Design Principles review

Hi Ian,

On Apr 26, 2007, at 12:21 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:

> I'm done reviewing, and I give it a thumbs up.
>
> http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/ProposedDesignPrinciples

Thanks for the quick review!

> Specifically, I have the following editorial suggestions:
>
> * I would recommend moving the links to the definitions of "backwards
> compatible" and "forwards compatible" to the end of the section,  
> because
> they don't seem to make anything clearer (in particular, the terms  
> aren't
> used, so it's not like they're helping the reader understand the  
> section).

Done.

> * To lessen the confusion of the "Don't Break The Web" entry, I  
> recommend
> removing "New versions of HTML must not break significant numbers  
> of Web
> pages", and adjusting the rest of the text to not use the word  
> "break".
> Maybe the entire thing should be renamed to not say "break".  
> Basically we
> want to be saying that a browser that implements our spec (and  
> other specs
> that supplement it, like CSS or DOM Core, but not anything else) will
> render existing content the same way as legacy browsers.

I renamed this principle to "Support Existing Content". Here is the  
new text:

Support Existing Content

SupportExistingContent: Browsers implementing the new version of HTML  
should still be able to handle existing content. Ideally, it should  
be possible to process web documents and applications via an HTML5  
implementation even if they were authored against older  
implementations and do not specifically request HTML5 processing.

All changes and additions could cause some content to malfunction at  
least in theory, but this will vary in degree. We need to judge  
whether the value of the change is worth the cost. Cross-browser  
content on the public Web should be given the most weight.
> I would drop all three Disputed Principles.

I'll leave them in for now, but I'm happy to do this after the review  
period if the group generally agrees. Does anyone want to advocate  
for any specific position on the disputed principles?

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Friday, 27 April 2007 07:04:31 UTC