Re: Choosing name for XML serialization (Was: Re: HTML5 differences from HTML4 editor's draft (XHTML5 and XHTML2))

I have a question about using the new semantic elements like
<section>, <article>, <aside>, etc in a backwards-compatible way.  Is
there an appropriate way to use them such that they HTML4- user agents
can render them but I can take advantage of any default rendering a
HTML5+ user agent will have?

Let's say I have:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html><body>
  <section>
    <h1>This Is A HTML5 Document</h1>
    <p>It is really keen.</p>
    <aside>You don't hear "keen" alot these days, do you?</aside>
    <p>But not too many UAs support it yet.</p>
  </section>
</body></html>

All browsers at the moment will render the contents of the <aside>
element as default styling of a paragraph, I guess.  But I assume that
once HTML5 UAs become "aside-aware" then some default styling will be
present for the <aside> elements.  In the meantime, what are my
options as a web author - if I try to style the <aside> elements with
a <style> element in the head:

<style type="text/css">
	aside { background-color:yellow; border-style:solid; float:right;}
</style>

then I'll override any default styling (which might be nicer) in
future UAs.  Is my only option to leave them unstyled?

Thanks,
Jeff


On 6/25/07, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 25 Jun 2007, Mark Birbeck wrote:
> >
> > But anyway, what about the other side of the equation? What about
> > authors who use 'video' in a document, which finds its way to an older
> > browser? There is nothing that can be done here within the language--a
> > problem for both HTML 5 and XTML 2.
>
> All the radically new features of HTML5 (<video>, <audio>, <canvas>,
> <event-source>) are designed in such a way that they have a fallback
> mechanism. This mechanism can be used to display alternative content for
> legacy UAs, in the same way that <object> has always had a way to fallback
> to alternative content; or it can be bypassed by script solutions, for
> example Google has implemented <canvas> in script so that it can be used
> with IE6 and IE7 despite their lack of <canvas> support.
>
> The less radically new features -- e.g. all the new form controls,
> <datalist>, <menu>, <datagrid>, etc -- are designed in such a way that in
> legacy UAs they will still be usable, just less feature-rich.
>
> There is a lot that can be done to design a language's new features in a
> backwards-compatible way. It is difficult and careful work, but it is
> possible, and HTML5 goes to great lengths to ensure that it uses such
> techniques throughout. Several features have been designed and then
> removed from HTML5 after flaws in the fallback behaviour were pointed out.
> We have in fact been ruthless about ensuring this. Several of my favourite
> features were removed because we couldn't find a way to do them in a
> backwards-compatible way.
>
> --
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
>
>

Received on Monday, 25 June 2007 19:53:06 UTC