Re: handling fallback content for still images

On Jul 5, 2007, at 2:17 AM, Thomas Broyer wrote:

>
> 2007/7/5, Robert Burns:
>>
>> > http://www.websandbox.net/media/examples/ietest.xml
>>
>> Disappointing. Safari too shows the fallback content along with  
>> the image.
>
> Same result with Safari 3.0.2 for Windows.
>
>> Firefox and Opera (on Mac OS X) do the right thing though.
>
> Not for me (on Windows).
>
> Firefox (2.0.0.4) doesn't show the first image nor its fallback
> content (nothing at all, as if it weren't in the page)
>
> Opera (9.21) shows "Image" in a "box" (i.e. missing image without
> @alt) for the first image (i.e. rich fallback isn't displayed)
>

Well, that probably describes what I saw on Mac OS X too for both  
Firefox and Opera. I said it was the right thing because I was more  
interested in them not displaying the fallback (so that it works in  
the normal case). Non-visual UAs could then pick-up the fallback and  
run with it. As for displaying fallback when the unusual circumstance  
where src URL fails, that is another matter. That to me is a minor  
bug and not really a show stopper.

>> When IE (ir?) adds easy XHTML support, perhaps they can have that  
>> fixed.
>
> They probably won't. XHTML (i.e. application/xhtml+xml) on the web has
> failed, that's why we're here discussing HTML 5 (because it means
> XForms on the Web has failed too).

I wonder how you know these things about Microsoft's road map  
(industrial espionage? :-) ). Well, XML has been incorporated into  
most (all?) of the major UAs (for years). It has some annoying bugs  
and quirks, but its there especially compared to HTML parsing, but  
its there . XHTML is there too. However, you have to trick IE.

Also HTML5 has an xml serialization. Will that serialization not be  
served as application/xhtml+xml or application/xml?

> Eventually serving XHTML as application/xml could work but a) you have
> to provide a full-fledge CSS stylesheet (browsers don't use their
> "default stylesheet for HTML" in this case)

I don't believe that is correct. The page we're discussing here is  
being served that way.  In any event, don't most authors provide  
their own stylsheets these days?

> and b) at the cost of
> losing "support" for non-XML-aware browsers.

As years pass this will likely not be an issue. As I said this is for  
a long-term solution to a long-standing problem. The xsl trick for IE  
works back to IE5 (1998?).  At this point we might be talking about  
NS4 and earlier, IE4 and earlier and IE5 for Mac. In 5 or 10 years  
are many sites going  to decide not to deploy XML for loss of those  
browsers?

Take care,
Rob

Received on Thursday, 5 July 2007 08:06:34 UTC