Re: Support Existing Content (was: Proposed Design Principles review)

On Apr 30, 2007, at 3:35 PM, Tina Holmboe wrote:

>
> On 30 Apr, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>
>>>   Does that mean we should add FONT to the standard? The WHAT WG
>>> seem to think so - I disagree; as does most everyone I know who  
>>> work with
>>> the web.
>>
>> Browsers are going to implement it whether the standard describes it
>> or not - so they may as well implement it interoperably in a way
>> defined by spec. Note that although the WHATWG spec requires UAs to
>
>   So, basically, you are saying that no matter what anyone ELSE might
>   say, the browser vendors will implement exactly what they WANT to
>   implement?
>
>   Regardless?
>

If a customer comes to us and says "We need the ability to do feature  
X", our answer is not going to be, "Sorry we can't do that, it's not  
defined in a standard yet.  Go use some proprietary technology  
instead."  You seem to be trying to paint a picture of browser  
vendors as selfish.  We implement what our customers demand, whether  
they are other developers on OS X trying to use WebKit to build  
applications, or site authors who ned more capabilities on the Web to  
avoid having to fall back to Flash.

Browser vendors can and will innovate.  The important takeaway from  
this though is that when we do innovate, we make sure to feed back  
our innovation to a standards body or group to see if there is  
interest in that feature becoming part of a specification.  This has  
happened with numerous CSS properties that we have invented as well  
as with the <canvas> element of course.

Sometimes there is interest, and sometimes there isn't, but this is  
just one of multiple avenues by which new features can wend their way  
into a future specification.  (And having the weight of some  
implementation experience certainly helps!)

But yes, if multiple browser vendors all view a feature as useful,  
and the HTML WG decrees that it is not useful, that doesn't mean that  
we should throw the idea away and never implement it.  Of course we  
browser vendors might get together and implement the feature anyway.

>
>   Again: if a feature X is added to the specification because a  
> majority
>   of those working on it agree it is necessary or wanted, but the
>   browser vendors /disagree/ - it'll simply be ignored?
>

It might be yes.  As we've seen with CSS there were numerous features  
that were ultimately ignored by vendors in CSS2.0, and so CSS2.1  
wisely dropped them from the specification.  I would suggest that if  
nobody wants to implement a feature (and isn't going to) that there  
is little value to putting it into the specification.

dave

Received on Monday, 30 April 2007 22:48:54 UTC