Re: Support Existing Content

Gareth Hay wrote:
> Is it not correct that each browser currently handles errors in their 
> own manner?

To a certain extent, yes.  They've all done some reverse-engineering of each 
other so that in the common case their various error-handling methods are 
compatible (at least insofar as giving the same visual rendering, and the same 
behavior when the user clicks on things, submits forms, etc).  There are edge 
cases where it's not, of course, and the common-case behavior is by no means 
simple in some situations.

> So If this is correct then I don't understand, some UA's will have to 
> change their error handling

Yes.

> breaking the web as much as "draconian"  error handling.

No.  Again, the existing UAs can by and large render the web already.  So the 
changes they would be making would generally be in edge cases that don't affect 
very many sites.

I got the impression that the UA vendors, other than Microsoft, are willing to 
change things as needed for interoperable error handling.

> Ok, so they will be changing to a consistent handling, but any change at 
> all will lead to as much disruption as what is being suggested?

I think there's a world of difference between changing behavior on a site that 
depends on the exact way that a bare <option> which is a direct child of 
<isindex> is parsed and introducing XML-like parse-failure-is-fatal behavior in 
HTML.

-Boris

Received on Friday, 4 May 2007 09:10:44 UTC