Re: a bad idea (fwd) -Reply

>>> Benjamin Franz <snowhare@netimages.com> 07/15/96 07:54am >>>
>On Mon, 15 Jul 1996, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 13 Jul 1996, Benjamin Franz wrote:
>> ...
>> > Honestly, I've never quite figured out
>> > why turning IMG into a container wasn't used as the backward
>compatible
>> > route out of the mess involving its introduction
>>  > Are you serious?  Think about what a browser would do on a
>typical
>> existing WWW page with the contained text while it looked for
>the next
>> </IMG>.... 
>
>???. I am slow today. How is this any different than the change
>over of
><P> to a container a few years ago? It should be possible to
>craft the content model to allow reliably implying of the close
>tag. 

<snip!>

>--  Benjamin Franz

Because of how older browsers would interpret IMG as a 
container, I'd say.

The great thing about having <object> as a container is 
that the text within the opening and closing tags will 
not be shown if the browser loads the object. This makes 
up for the inadequacies of ALT text because you can put 
text with markup between "<object>" and "</object>"

If IMG was simply declared a container, "older" browsers 
would display *BOTH* the image and the alternate text, 
defeating the whole purpose.  If I remember correctly, an 
old version of NCSA Mosaic for Macintosh displayed this 
behavior with the <fig> tag.

Contrast this with the <p> tag.  In this example:

<h1> heading </h1><p>first par. <p> second par

there would be no difference between how html 1 and
html 2 parsers would interpret this, except for an extra 
line break between the heading and the first paragraph.

C  h a r l e s    P e y t o n   T a y l o r        
ctaylor@nps.navy.mil

The opinions and views expressed       ##  even though we're on
our own,

are my own and do not reflect          ##        we are never all
alone,

Those of the Naval PostGraduate School ##  when we are singing,
singing.

                   http://vislab-www.nps.navy.mil/%7ectaylor/

Received on Monday, 15 July 1996 19:26:26 UTC