Re: Documenting Web app assumptions, and HTML

On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 9:42 PM, Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org> wrote:
> 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.

Do you have an example of an assumption that doesn't apply to HTML
outside desktop/mobile browsers?

And more importantly, do you have any suggestions as to how to resolve
the discrepancy you describe?

/ Jonas

Received on Thursday, 4 June 2009 05:35:48 UTC