Re: results: HTML 4.0 tags

c.g.colwell@herts.ac.uk (Chetz Colwell) wrote:

> Some participants were confused because tags like OBJECT, ACCESSKEY which
> are new to HTML 4.0, are recommended by the GLs but are not yet supported
> by browsers (OBJECT by neither Netscape or IE, ACCESSKEY by Netscape).
> 
> It is difficult for page authors to know whether they have implemented
> advice correctly because they cannot get the tag to work.  When I pointed
> out the reason these participants said that this should be indicated in the
> Guidelines.

It is always difficult to indicate which kind of browsers support
which kind of features.  Almost every features have possibility
that they are not supported by some implementations.  We can't list
ALL existing/emerging browsers.

I'm quite worrying that if we only list some major browsers, people
might only care for those (only a few) major browsers.  Even though
OBJECT might not be supported by current version of Netscape and IE,
TV communities will DO use OBJECT (such as ATVEF).  Mobile communities
think that ACCESSKEY is quite helpful for some mobile devices, such as
mobile phone.  I know there are browsers for those devices which
support ACCESSKEY.  

As Nir pointed out, browsers are not validators.  We should
concentrate on advising people to do the right thing.

Regards,
-- 
Masayasu Ishikawa / mimasa@w3.org
W3C - World Wide Web Consortium

Received on Thursday, 5 November 1998 20:54:40 UTC