Re: Versioning re-visited (was : mixed signals on "Writing HTML documents", tutorial, etc.)

On 22 Jun 2007, at 04:40, Ian Hickson wrote:

>> * It allows the automatic validation of the HTML documents against  
>> the
>> precise HTML version they are targeting.
>
> This is still possible without version information, you just need  
> to tell
> the conformance checker what you intend to test against. CSS works  
> like
> this, for instance.
>
>
>> * Allows "flavours" of HTML such as "XHTML Basic".
>
> Profiling the data-level language is harmful, but even if it wasn't,
> versioning isn't actually required to do it. CSS, for example, is not
> versioned but has been successfully profiled many more times than  
> HTML.


I know this is going off topic, but is still slightly relent...

Personally I worry about CSS and how its lack of versioning is  
implemented.

Imagine what would happen if a (poorly authored) website puts text in  
a div, with the following CSS3 rules:

body {
   background: #FFF;
}

div {
   color: #FFF;
   background:
     url('top.gif') top left no-repeat,
     url('bottom.gif') bottom left no-repeat,
     url('middle.gif') left repeat-y;
}

Taking that the 'middle.gif' image is providing a black background...  
then current browsers (like FF2/IE7) could render this page all in  
white, as they would ignore the 'invalid' (CSS2) background rule!

NOTE: In reality you should built your websites so that images can be  
disabled... but unfortunately most developers don't bother... and I  
am sure there are better examples of this CSS2/CSS3 conflict, perhaps  
more so with positioning of elements (more research required).

It would have been nice for us developers to say "In order to use  
these CSS rules, you, the browser, needs to declare that you THINK  
you know CSS3"... in this case, the current round of CSS2 browsers,  
even though they don't get CSS2 completely right yet, will still not  
bother trying to use the CSS3 rules... instead just leaving the raw  
content for the user.



On 22 Jun 2007, at 04:40, Ian Hickson wrote:
>> * A validator may advise updating to a newer version if it can
>> automatically tell what version was used, and another tool may  
>> provide
>> some help in the conversion to the newer version.
>
> If you omit versioning information and ensure the language remains
> backwards compatible, there is actually no need to update anything.


Ok... how about the table @summary... and all the other attributes  
which look like they are being dropped?

Craig

Received on Saturday, 23 June 2007 13:20:45 UTC