- From: David Hyatt <hyatt@apple.com>
- Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 15:47:51 -0700
- To: tina@greytower.net
- Cc: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>, "Philip Taylor (Webmaster)" <P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
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