Re: Is the design of <dl> tag flawed?

On 24/11/2016 09:50, Ian Yang wrote:

> Personally, I think Domenic's reason is flawed, too. An arguably flawed
> feature in HTML is widely used so we should not deprecate it and improve
> HTML? I don't understand that logic.

Once a certain markup pattern/feature is so widely deployed, for such a 
long time, you hit a few snags when trying to retrospectively change it:

- the vast number of content out in the wild that uses the "old" 
(current) structure. How should user agents handle this if the structure 
was changed? Should they include handling for both "legacy" and "new" 
structures? How would they switch between them? (we've had this years 
ago with the dreaded quirks mode vs standards mode, and it's not pretty)

- the number of user agents in the wild that consume HTML - not just the 
latest versions of the most common browsers (which can arguably be 
changed easily enough to handle any changes in HTML/structure, barring 
the problem above about legacy/new), but all old user agents, integrated 
user agents in things like smart TVs etc, old versions of browsers that 
still need to work, utility libraries / components that form part of 
larger frameworks/SDKs/applications that consume HTML

The second point is arguably a problem for any new feature development. 
But at the very least if a *new* structure/markup construct/element is 
proposed, it is generally ignored/fails gracefully on older UAs. 
Redefining the structure/behavior of a construct that is already 
deployed, however, causes more complicated failure scenarios.

IMO, of course,

P
-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

www.splintered.co.uk | https://github.com/patrickhlauke
http://flickr.com/photos/redux/ | http://redux.deviantart.com
twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke

Received on Thursday, 24 November 2016 09:07:55 UTC