Re: Versioning and html[5]

I second John Resig's thoughts.
http://ejohn.org/blog/meta-madness/

-Samuel Santos

On Jan 22, 2008 12:23 PM, Chris Wilson <Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com> wrote:

>
> Smylers wrote:
> >This sounds to be what IE will be doing, though it's explained here in a
> >way which isn't specific to IE and which suggests codifying the release
> >of other browsers being used is also useful:
> >
> >  http://www.alistapart.com/articles/beyonddoctype
>
> Indeed.  Aaron thinks it would be useful in other browsers.  As I have
> little day-to-day experience working around problems in other browsers, I am
> ambivalent, and have always told my team internally that although I would
> like a solution that could be adopted by other browsers if they chose, I'm
> under no delusion that those here in the HTML WG from other browsers would.
>
> >It's also unclear what a user-agent that isn't any of the 3 named there
> >(such as one written from scratch) should do on encountering the above
> >declaration.  Presumably it should try to emulate the behaviour of IE8
> >and Firefox 3, even though those behaviours aren't specced anywhere?
>
> No; it should give whatever it chooses to give as its default behavior.
>
> >As Ian pointed out...
> >> As is *still happening today* with quirks mode, other browsers will be
> >> forced to implement the quirks in order to be compatible with the
> >> content that was intended to IE. Introducing a new version freeze
> >> every few years will increase the complexity of building a browser by
> >> orders of magnitude.
>
> No, because as is *already happening today*, other browsers have different
> behavior, and web developers will write to their behavior in their
> implementations.  If an intelligent web designer wants to write content that
> works in all browsers (which I think we all would agree is the goal here),
> then simply insert the IE meta tag with the current version of IE you're
> testing with, and write away.  What's that?  You're not even loading your
> page in IE to check it?   Okay, then, perhaps you would like to use "edge"
> mode.
>
> >> The alternative is to write the spec in such a way that implementing
> >> it does not cause significant breakage. Given that I want to write a
> >> spec that describes how to render the content in _all_ of IE's modes
> >> -- quirks, today's standards, tomorrow's standards --
>
> That spec is not the HTML5 spec, or the CSS 2.1 spec, as they do not
> capture all the "idiosyncrasies" of IE6.  I do not expect Firefox to
> replicate our IE6 overflow behavior in "standards mode" in the future;
> indeed, I expect there's lots of content out there already that expects them
> to follow the spec, whilst simultaneously that same content probably expects
> IE to not follow the spec.  This is the core of our problem - single content
> that expects different behavior from different browsers today.  Many of you
> are treating this as if it doesn't exist, while I expect nearly every single
> web-developer-for-hire in the world has written workaround code at one point
> or another.
>
> -Chris Wilson
>
> PS don't expect quick responses from me right now, I'm on vacation.  Back
> later this week.
>
>
>