- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:44:35 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Cc: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>, public-html <public-html@w3.org>
On Thu, 22 Apr 2010, Maciej Stachowiak wrote: > > It seems like some of these examples are not approaches that we should > be recommending to authors. In particular: > > > * showing not offering fallback at all > > > > * showing a useless comment typical on the Web, saying that the plugin is > > not installed or is disabled, with no proposed alternative > > > > * showing an honest message equivalent to the useless comment mentioned > > above (this is the one being objected to) > > What is the purpose of the above three examples? It seems like they > would only be helpful as examples of what *not* to do. > > Are there other examples in the spec that illustrate a poor authoring > practice? We're talking about plugins here. There are no good authoring practices, only bad ones and worse ones. Regarding the three bullets above: For the first one, there are times where offering no fallback is fine; for example when to reach the page you have to have gone through a mechanism that verifies that you have the plugin in the first place, or where the plugin is doing nothing but adding something decorative. For the second and third, both are bad, and more or less equivalent from the user's perspective; however, they are an inevitable result of writing content using a proprietary technology. In the case of the second bullet point, the example is specifically of an author showing off his Java programming skills, so it makes no sense to have any other fallback. The introductory text for the example discusses the implications of doing this. For the third bullet point, the text is self-explanatory regarding the danger of relying on a plugin -- it is in fact that explanation that people are objecting to here. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Friday, 23 April 2010 00:45:09 UTC