- From: Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>
- Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:35:56 -0700
- To: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Cc: Travis Leithead <travil@windows.microsoft.com>, "public-webapi@w3.org" <public-webapi@w3.org>, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
Maciej Stachowiak wrote: > > > 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). Yup, this is a bad situation indeed. Basically browsers are stuck with no good way out: Be compatible with the spec, or be compatible with the web. Of course any serious web browser is going to choose the latter. / Jonas
Received on Monday, 9 June 2008 06:37:16 UTC