- From: Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>
- Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 13:37:08 +0100
On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 01:01:38 +0100, Matthew Ratzloff <matt at builtfromsource.com> wrote: > On Sun, March 11, 2007 3:20 pm, Anne van Kesteren wrote: >> There needs to be versioning? The web has done great so far without >> it... I'm not sure I really see the need. > > The Web has done great so far without it? When "strict" mode was > introduced, all existing websites didn't suddenly start rendering under > it. It was opt-in. Versioning is just a formalized way of opting into a > certain rendering method. FWIW: Introducing strict mode has been quite painful and still is. Every time you encounter a rendering bug on some web page you have to check on what rendering mode the page relies (quirks, almost standards or standards) and then figure out what the behavior should be for quirks and almost standards by reverse engineering other popular browsers. Next time such a thing comes up we should just "fix" the specifications instead in my opinion to keep things predictable for authors and "easy" for implementors. Versioning of APIs can probably work ok if there's a single implementation, because then the specification for a particular version is just that, the implementation. For multiple separately evolving implementations that deal with something as complex as the web it's not really feasible though. -- Anne van Kesteren <http://annevankesteren.nl/> <http://www.opera.com/>
Received on Wednesday, 14 March 2007 05:37:08 UTC