Re: Almost Standards Mode still needed?

On Nov 8, 2008, at 09:00, Daniel Schattenkirchner wrote:

> While reading the article 'Introducing Compatibility View' [1] in a  
> magazine discussing Internet Explorer 8, I found out, that IE8 will  
> include an Almost Standards Mode, like the other engines do. That  
> is, there'll be no 'mysterious gaps' under images in tables.

Is this the IE8 CSS formatter with the single images-in-tables quirk  
like in the Almost Standards Modes of the other browsers? Could a  
Microsoft representative please confirm?

> * First, the image gaps are easily solved by simple CSS. So I don't  
> think a workaround provided by the browser is necessary.

That simple (and I might say unintuitive) CSS is something the *site*  
needs to provide in the (Full) Standards Mode. Therefore, there's a  
very real compat problem with sites that don't provide it. That is, if  
someone ships a browser that implements the CSS2 line box model fully  
for images in tables for sites that now trigger Almost Standars in  
Gecko/Opera/WebKit, layouts will break in an ugly way, which probably  
won't cause a positive user opinion of the browser exhibiting such  
breakage.

> So my question is, are we really still in need of Almost Standards  
> Mode?

Yes, we are. Most standards-aware new commercial Web design seems to  
happen in the Almost Standards Mode--not in the Full Standards Mode  
these days.

If you consider the Quirks Mode, Almost Standards Mode and Standards  
Mode in Gecko/Opera/WebKit, the one whose elimination would cause the  
least disruption would be the Standards Mode (if made behave as Almost  
Standards). However, at this stage, there's reluctance to changing the  
modes. (Simon Pieters suggested making the Standards Mode behave like  
the Almost Standards Mode in http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2008May/0266.html 
  but the reception wasn't enthusiastic.)

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Sunday, 9 November 2008 13:20:59 UTC