RE: Almost Standards Mode still needed?

I'll take on that role of Microsoft Representative :-)
(BTW, thanks for the nomination Mr. Wilson)

>> 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?

Yes, this is the same. Like other browsers before us, we also found that legacy table-formatted content tends to look pretty ugly without this "almost complete" mode. So, we join the ranks. Obviously, compatibility is just as important to us as standards compliance, and in this case, precedent has already been set.

I do believe that there are only a select few DOCTYPEs that trigger this, but I don't know what they are off hand. You folks probably do (or will have looked it up before I get around to it).

-Travis


-----Original Message-----
From: public-html-request@w3.org [mailto:public-html-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Henri Sivonen
Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2008 5:20 AM
To: Daniel Schattenkirchner
Cc: public-html@w3.org
Subject: 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 Tuesday, 11 November 2008 04:39:46 UTC