- From: Jim Ley <jim.ley@gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 15:29:45 +0100
On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 13:50:31 +0000 (UTC), Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote: > > On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, Jim Ley wrote: > I think you are reading way too much into "backwards compatible". > > HTML4+ECMAScript is "backwards compatible" with Lynx. Sure it is, but HTML4 + WF2 is not - since you're over constraining things like datetime which mean they do not work in a non-WF2 browser without particularly aware users. Consider datetime input, it requires the client to send back the time in UTC, so a non WF2 UA can't do this unless the user inputs it in UTC. The other types have similar problems - CSS and script degradation is fine, and works since the data transferred across HTTP is equivalent in both instances, as soon as we have forms which have different semantics in WF2 and legacy browsers we don't have that. I can't use a WF2 page in Opera 6, unless the server is intelligent enough to cope with it (and how it's supposed to know it's a WF2 client hasn't yet been explained) or I happen to enter the dead right format. > You said that you half-agreed > with the backwards-compatibility argument presented at the recent > workshop; which part did you _not_ agree with? No, I didn't say I argeed to that, I said I voted for the work to improve and extend HTML 4 within the W3, I support graceful degradation, but very little of the WF2 content does gracefully degrade other than on a purely visual sense, the interaction environment with the server doesn't degrade gracefully. > The idea is that with WHATWG-spec-based documents, you still get most of > the content. Just like when HTML4 came out, and UAs only did HTML3.2. Or > when CSS came out and UAs only did HTML. but getting the content in a form is completely useless when it doesn't work! CSS doesn't change the semantics (well that's actually rubbish as lots of people use it to, and abuses like content do, but in general CSS doesn't) WF2 doesn't degrade like CSS, it maybe could, but the spec needs a lot of changing before that happens. > What do you mean by backwards compatibility, in the context of new > specifications like this? The content works in existing UA's - I do not believe the WF2 spec meets that goals in all but a minor part of it. The whole spec seems to be missing both use-cases (what is the use case of a UTC datetime control?) and realistic descriptions of how it degrade, publish some WF2 applications, show us how they degrade in todays browsers! Jim.
Received on Monday, 21 June 2004 07:29:45 UTC