Re: HDP: Revised "Support Existing Content" Principle

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

> Why not? That's exactly the kind of existing content we want to support, 
> but not necessarily condone.
> 
>> more useful examples would be
>>
>> a) "vspace", "hspace", "align" on "img" or "cellpadding", 
>> "cellspacing" on "table".
> 
> These are good examples, but they are not specified in the draft yet. I 
> will make a note to add them later.
> 
>> b) some authors use the "alt" tag where the "title" tag may be more 
>> appropriate.
> 
> I don't think the draft has anything special to address this, and I'm 
> not sure how it could. It doesn't say to treat alt as title or anything.
> 
>> c)use of quotes  eg src=test.jpg instead of src="test.jpg"
> 
> Omitting the quotes in this case is conforming in both HTML 4.01 and 
> HTML 5, so I don't think this makes a very strong example.
> 
Hi Maciej,

To me, handling of poor markup by browsers is an example of
the "Degrade Gracefully" Principle rather than the
support existing content principle.

After sending my email, I felt I should have added the broken html seems a good 
example of the degrade gracefully principle.

As I see it, Support existing content refers to features that may have
been in HTML3.2 or 4.01 or XHTML etc. specifications but
have been dropped in later ones.

My tests with the w3c compliance indicates that the quotes are required for a
tick/greenlight on conformance with 4.01 however, browsers degrade gracefully if
they are not present.

I see the principles as relevant to the drafting of HTML5. So, providing an
example of the implications of dropping a feature could be useful.

eg. if vspace or alt was dropped browsers would still need to support this feature.

Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://www.ramin.com.au
Phone: (+61)0414 869202

Received on Tuesday, 18 September 2007 01:23:02 UTC