[whatwg] borders on images inside links

I believe the rendering section should describe a default style
rule, present in Gecko and in Internet Explorer (and also in
Netscape 4.x and earlier, Mosaic, etc.), that gives borders to
images inside links.  In Gecko, this is represented as:

  :link img, :visited img, img[usemap], object[usemap] { border: 2px solid; }


People have expressed concern that this rule is a bad default
because it's a rule that authors frequently override.  I agree that
it's a bad default for HTML that is used as an application, but I
think it's a good default for HTML as a document.  And I think there
is content written on the assumption that borders would visually
indicate links -- I know I've written some.

I think we're better off not breaking compatibility here, as it's a
very-long-standing (for the Web) precedent.  I'd rather see
15-year-old Web pages continue to work as intended rather than
gradually turn them into something that requires 15-year-old
software to read.

For more information (and the reason that prompted me to post here),
see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=452915 .

-David

-- 
L. David Baron                                 http://dbaron.org/
Mozilla Corporation                       http://www.mozilla.com/

Received on Monday, 1 March 2010 21:20:04 UTC