Re: HTML Improvement/Suggestion

Anne van Kesteren schreef:
>> Afaik, the type attribute (or whatever its name may be) in this case 
>> means to indicate what types it accepts. So supposedly <object 
>> src="bla.html" type="image/*">fallback content</object> would result 
>> in the fallback content being shown, unless the server associates the 
>> .html extension with an image/ type.
>
> Really? I hope that's not true. Looking at the definition of 
> "srctype"[1] (heck,
> had it to be renamed?) you might be right. I'd say it is very 
> underdefined
> though.

Basically you would just be controlling (or rather: filtering) the 
Accept: header… I suppose that’s an advantage of having <img> as a 
shorthand for <object srctype="image/*">; otherwise the Accept header 
would more often be sent much more generally than is necessary when you 
want to view an image, because people would often omit the srctype 
attribute, and you would loose information like ‘this browser/user 
prefers PNG over BMP’.

On the other hand, people who really want to use the Accept header might 
just as well be told to just use the attribute then :). It’s not an oft 
used feature of HTTP. On the other other hand, at least in Mozilla the 
Accept header for images is much shorter than the general one, so 
there’s a few bytes to be saved (pffft ;p).

Anyways, the definition is fine by me. If you specify a type, obviously 
you don’t want anything else (object type="image/svg+xml" clearly 
doesn’t mean you would like to receive a PNG ^_^). But yeah, why change 
the name…

But heh, you’re the one saying it isn’t compatible anyway! :) More 
seriously though, in case XHTML2.0 ever would get an 
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml namespace browsers could still ‘understand’ 
the old attributes. Maybe it’s a good way for the browsers to 
distinguish XHTML 1.0 <object> element behavior from XHTML 2.0 <object> 
behavior (assuming that it differs).

Anyways, I would appreciate it if for once the HTML WG would either 
commit to using the XHTML 1.0 namespace (oh, yes please), or just break 
totally free from it. Then at least I’d know what we’re heading for with 
this, and form an opinion based on that. Because obviously if you want 
to stay semi-compatible with XHTML 1.0, there are other considerations 
than if you don’t.


~Grauw

-- 
Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Laurens Holst, student, university of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Website: www.grauw.nl. Backbase employee; www.backbase.com.

Received on Monday, 12 December 2005 23:55:22 UTC