- From: Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org>
- Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 00:42:31 -0400
- To: Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>
- Cc: Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com>, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@mit.edu>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 10:17 PM, Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc> wrote: > As a direct consequence of this, as long as something works > consistently in a few browsers, it's likely that developers will > become dependent on it. So to use the example used here, if one > browser load all the images before firing the 'load' event, and keep > all the image data around for synchronous access, it's likely that > sites will come to depend on it, no matter if the spec doesn't have > this as a requirement, or even if the spec explicitly says that it's > undefined. Personally, I agree that this behaviour amoungst authors is prevalent and unavoidable, and I completely understand the desktop browser vendors' need to maintain this legacy behaviour. I applaud them for working towards trying to make this behaviour more consistent between competing browsers too; I believe that is in the best interest of the Web. At the same time though (you knew that was coming 8-), as I've stated in slightly different ways several times before here, I think those vendors are doing a great disservice to the Web by baking these assumptions into a specification for the HTML language. HTML is a language which has utility far beyond the reaches of the desktop browser (or even mobile browsers and search engines, for that matter) where many/most of those assumptions simply don't apply. I neither expect nor desire to rehash the same old arguments along these lines. I just wanted this message to make the connection between this line of discussion and my position on what the HTML 5 specification should and shouldn't contain. Mark.
Received on Thursday, 4 June 2009 04:43:09 UTC