- From: <tina@greytower.net>
- Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 00:08:34 +0200 (CEST)
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
On 25 Jun, Matt May wrote: >> Should we interpret that to mean that a user-agent should >> "accommodate" users by ignoring parts of the XML specs when rendering >> XHTML ? > > The only reason the browsers do any kind of repair at all is because a > user would reasonably believe that, if they went to look at a page and > saw nothing, it would be the fault of the browser. The browser serves > the user, not the author. That's why it's a "user agent". > > When content is designed to a standard, the user agent is obligated to > adhere to that standard when rendering it (and most if not all now do > this). But poorly-designed content doesn't give you that kind of > contract. A problem, once the content is published, would harm the > user, and thus has to be handled by the user agent. The _fault_, > however, belongs to the author and/or his or her authoring tool. Of course. I'm getting abit sleepy, and can't follow the REST of the argument. You started out by saying that: "But the other browser makers (rightly) assume that it's better to accommodate the user by working around errors in authored content than to punish them." This was, as far as I can tell, in regard to HTML - but since we're discussing XHTML I still wonder: what should a user-agent do with broken XHTML ? Try to repair it ? Can't - we'd be into non-standards compliant stuff then. You don't seriously think all XHTML written will be perfect XHTML, just 'cause it's "stricter" ? You can't nest P's in HTML, but people still do - and they get away with it because UAs allow it. You can't nest P's in XHTML either, but they'll get away with it because UAs don't support XHTML - and if UAs start doing so BUT error corrects, then voila. Why write valid XHTML ? >> If so, any other parts we should have fun with ignoring whilst we're >> at it ? > > Ha ha. Oh, I'm sorry. It wasn't meant as a joke. > HTML without any more help. We have arrived at a point in time where > the way to get things to show up the way you want is not to hack around > the edges of each browsers, but to design valid code (thus staying in Yes, well. I and many with me has been saying this since 1996 and even earlier. It doesn't seem to help, does it ? > Standards". It is unacceptable and egregiously bad design practice (not > to mention the cause of myriad accessibility problems) to depend on the > browser to fix an author's broken content. So an XHTML-supporting browser SHOULD stop on encountering an error, then ? -- - Tina Holmboe Greytower Technologies tina@greytower.net http://www.greytower.net/ [+46] 0708 557 905
Received on Wednesday, 25 June 2003 18:08:53 UTC