Re: Conformance requirements on browsers

On Thu, 12 Sep 2013 08:36:48 +0200, Jukka K. Korpela  
<jukka.k.korpela@kolumbus.fi> wrote:

> 2013-09-11 17:44, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
>> On 9/11/13 7:17 AM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>>> But now I started wondering what is e.g. the status of the (widely
>>> supported) @background attribute in <td>. It is just mentioned in 11.2,
>>> in a long list of obsolete attributes, with the note "Use CSS instead."
>>
>> It's also mentioned in 10.3.9:
>
> Thanks. It indeed describes the effect of the attribute. I wonder if it  
> is intentional that 11.2 does not refer to the description (in this or  
> similar cases).
>
> My question still applies to constructs that are only mentioned (and  
> declared obsolete). At least <bgsound> is among them. Subsection 11.2  
> says just “Use audio instead”, and it is mentioned in parsing rules  
> (must be parsed as empty element), and it must use HTMLUnknownElement.  
> So a little more than just mentioned, but with no description of the  
> meaning or effect of the element, though ”Use audio instead” implicitly  
> says that it’s about sound.

So in general if the spec doesn't have requirements to do something,  
nothing must be done. It doesn't have negative requirements in general  
because there are an infinite things one could do.


> Does this mean that browsers are required to parse <bgsound> as an empty  
> element

Yes.

> and treat it as an HTMLUnknownElement object (which means just that in  
> scripting you can detect it as HTMLUnknownElement but otherwise it’s  
> HTMLElemen, right?)

Yes.

> but can then do whatever they want with it?

No.

> Or shall they otherwise ignore it?

Yes.

> Is IE non-conforming because it keeps supporting <bgsound>?

Yes.

> We have an interesting company in 11.3.4: “The |blink  
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/obsolete.html#blink>|,

http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/rendering.html#phrasing-content-1

(But see https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=21712 - browsers  
are moving towards ignoring blink but Hixie doesn't want to update the  
spec to match.)

> |bgsound <http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/obsolete.html#bgsound>|,

See above.

> |isindex <http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/obsolete.html#isindex-0>|,

http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/tree-construction.html#isindex

> |multicol <http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/obsolete.html#multicol>|, |nextid  
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/obsolete.html#nextid>|, |rb  
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/obsolete.html#rb>|, and |spacer  
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/obsolete.html#spacer>| elements must use the  
> |HTMLUnknownElement  
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/dom.html#htmlunknownelement>| interface.”

These have no effect.

> Is this meant to say something more than it formally says?

No.

> Does it mean that support to these should be dropped? Currently <blink>  
> is not supported by newest versions of any browser (though support still  
> exists in relatively new versions), <bgsound> is now IE-only but still  
> supported in IE 10, <isindex> is widely supported (though little used),  
> <multicol> died with Netscape, <nextid> never had any browser support,  
> <rb> is redundant, and <spacer> has probably been dead about a decade.

See above.

HTH,
-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software

Received on Thursday, 12 September 2013 07:15:00 UTC