- From: Matthew Raymond <mattraymond@earthlink.net>
- Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 04:31:30 -0400
Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>>> lots off script,
>>
>> Obviously, unsupported Javascript objects can't degrade, but I think
>> the only ones defined so far in WA1 are those that already exist and
>> are widely used by multiple browsers.
>
> 'display:none' is probably even more widely implemented.
This is part of another thread ("Re: [whatwg] Suggestion for Menus
in Web Forms 2.0"), and has little to do with a graceful degradation
requirement. Furthermore, there's no analogy between a Javascript object
that can't be used on legacy browsers and an HTML labeling element that
requires CSS to prevent the label from being rendered.
With the Javascript objects, even if you use object detection to
trigger alternative code on legacy user agents, it's still handled
within Javascript, and doesn't spill out into HTML markup or CSS. By
contrast, requiring text to be a child node of and element instead of
allowing THE OPTION of an attribute for the text forces the use of CSS
in legacy browsers without providing any real benefit to the webmaster.
Furthermore, there are already precedents of using attributes for text,
such as the |label| attribute for <option> and the |alt| attribute for
<img>.
Clearly, graceful degradation will not be possible for all possible
features, but this is better handled on a case-by-case basis rather than
rejecting the concept of graceful degradation outright.
Received on Tuesday, 10 August 2004 01:31:30 UTC