Re: <keygen> element

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 
> On Sep 5, 2009, at 8:26 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote:
> 
>> Putting just the <keygen> element, but none of the actual
>> functionality, thus allowing microsoft (or anyone else) to just
>> implement a very small amount of stubbed code seems like a political
>> solution. It wouldn't actually help any website authors, and it would
>> force UAs to still implement (and test) the stubbed code.

I agree with this perspective.

Bug 7499 captures the requirement: "<keygen> should not be defined as a 
requirement for a conforming HTML5 user agent".  It then goes further 
and states "and should be removed from the spec" -- this second part is 
just one possible way to satisfy the requirement.

 From a technical perspective, what the current spec states is not 
something that every browser with non-trivial market share intends to 
implement.  That's the problem to be solved.

>> Is there a reason we couldn't mark <keygen> conforming but
>> obsolete/deprecated? All UAs seem to want to deprecate and replace
>> (thus remove) the feature. Saying that it's obsolete and/or deprecated
>> would seem to reflect that fairly well.
> 
> Marking it obsolete or deprecated would still make it required for IE to 
> implement. (All current obsolete features in HTML5 are mandatory for 
> implementations.) Do you think they should be allowed to not implement it?

I agree that obsolete or deprecated would not be sufficient.  It could 
be done in addition to making it optional, but not instead of.

> What marking it obsolete would do is result in a conformance error on 
> every page using it - this seems orthogonal to Microsoft's concern, and 
> at least to me it seems unhelpful. But perhaps you have some different 
> concerns that would be addressed by making keygen obsolete.

While error might be overkill, unless the expectation is that this 
element will be universally implemented, a warning does seem in order.

>  - Maciej

- Sam Ruby

Received on Sunday, 6 September 2009 10:59:40 UTC