Re: Rethinking HTML 5

Jeff Cutsinger wrote:
> Ok. Let's use an example: the new video element. Whether you like it or 
> not is irrelevant. This is about backwards compatibility.
> 
> <video src='my.mov'></video>
> 
> Obviously, that's not going to display my.mov in existing browsers
> (unless they're farther along than I expected, but let's just use IE. It
> certainly won't). BUT, the nice thing is, whatever's inside is fallback
> content. So,
> ...
> <video src='my.mov'><object data='...'>...</object></video>
> 
> This is what we mean by backwards compatibility.

You're talking about graceful degradation.  Backwards compatibility in 
this context refers to maintaining compatibility with existing components.

Some examples of non-backwards compatible changes would be renaming an 
element like <script> to <handler>, or redefining the <label> element to 
be a list header, instead of a form control label.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Received on Wednesday, 2 May 2007 09:42:30 UTC