- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2008 14:46:07 -0700
- To: Travis Leithead <travil@windows.microsoft.com>
- Cc: "public-webapi@w3.org" <public-webapi@w3.org>, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
On Jun 6, 2008, at 2:20 PM, Travis Leithead wrote: > > While implementing some improvements to getAttribute in IE8, we > actually checked in code that is conformant to what the spec says > about the return value: > > Return Value > DOMString > The Attr value as a string, or the empty string if that attribute > does not have a specified or default value > > Once this code was in, we immediately hit app and site compat > problems because we always returned a string--an empty string--if > the "attribute [did] not have a specified or default value". > > As it turns out in practice, all browsers actually implement this a > slightly different way: they return the value as a string, or null > if the attribute does not have a specified or default value. In > other words, if there is no entry for the requested attribute in the > NamedNodeMap, then null is returned. > > IE8 is being fixed to be conformant with what everyone else has > implemented, I just thought I would pass this along to whomever is > doing the DOM L3 Core Second Edition so that it might be recorded in > that spec, an errata, or so that we can discuss. Anne and I suggested an errata for this a few years back, but the DOM folks were not receptive at the time, out of consideration for server- side Java DOM implementations: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom/2005OctDec/0011.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom/2005OctDec/0025.html See the thread for more discussion. I also at the time raised another compatibility issue that I thought should be fixed in errata: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom/2005OctDec/0024.html The short version is that DOM forbids inserting nodes into a different document than their ownerDocument, but browsers allow it (in at least some cases). These two issues are Safari's only failures in the official DOM Level 1 Core test suite. I believe neither of these failures can be fixed without significantly breaking web compatibility. Regards, Maciej
Received on Friday, 6 June 2008 21:46:51 UTC