[Bug 23260] Make the dir attribute use isolation instead of embedding

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=23260

--- Comment #12 from Aharon Lanin <aharon.lists.lanin@gmail.com> ---
Primarily, what changed for me is that, unbeknownst to us, IE 8 - 10 started
treating the dir attribute in a way that is:
- incompatible with the current spec
- not backward compatible
- not interoperable with other browsers
- similar in effect to isolation (in the usual case).

The interesting part is that when IE did this, the world did not come to an
end. No complaints made their way to me. No bugs were filed on products I
follow that were due to this change. I heard nothing about it on the web.

Thus, the arguments and dire predictions I made in bug 10807 comment 26 against
making isolation the default behavior of the dir attribute simply did not stand
the test of time. Some of the use cases I cited there did come from real pages,
but that usage was changed soon after I cited because it was broken in other
ways - not because the IE8 change had broken it.

It turned out that I was just too obsessed with backward compatibility. 

You did suggest three years ago precisely what we are suggesting now, and I was
the one who argued not to do it. In March of this year, I was dumbfounded to
discovered the change in IE, and gradually became convinced that I was wrong to
argue against changing the semantics of dir. By the time I was writing comment
8 above, it appears that I had completely repressed that history. I simply did
not remember your suggestion and my response. I profoundly apologize for my
very partial (and self-serving) recollection. I realized just how unfair it was
when you answered my comment, and have been beating myself up over it for the
past couple of weeks. Once again, I apologize.

In any case, I am only addressing here the backward compatibility issue. It
appears I also need to clarify further the problems with using <bdi>, but want
to do so separately, and only if we can get past the backward compatibility
issue.

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Received on Wednesday, 9 October 2013 08:08:24 UTC