- From: John Udall <jsu1@cornell.edu>
- Date: Thu, 09 Oct 1997 11:35:15 -0400
- To: www-style@w3.org
At 02:59 PM 10/7/97 -0700, David Perrell wrote:
[-snip-]
>
>On the other hand, maybe this lame legacy support is a good thing.
>Stylesheet authors probably shouldn't make any assumptions about default
>stylesheets, and this situation shows why. Don't take chances with CSS and
>taxes. Declare everything.
>
Pardon me for butting in, but what would the impact be in terms of
development effort, code-base size, maintenance requirements, etc. if one
were to develop the browser so that it has a user-controlled toggle to
switch between a more permissive "legacy support" mode for viewing
documents and a more strict DTD interpretation of the documents? I'm just
brain-storming here. I can see some potential problems from an interface
design point of view, like how do you explain what this feature is and how
it would work to the end-user. But calling it something like "compatability
mode" with appropriate options would probably take care of that. If you
want to encourage more people to use more strict HTML, then just ship the
product with the strict option set. If the user community screams during
beta testing (or alpha, since betas are turning into "preview releases"
rather than real tests recently), then ship it with the more permissive
HTML interpretation as the default. This puts the control firmly in the
hands of the end-user, where most of us want it to be anyway.
It just seems to me that a feature like this would be desirable, if it
could resonably be accomadated in the development process. Otherwise, we
can all just wait for the XML browsers, and deal with same legacy support
problems again at that point.
-John
>David Perrell
>
>
>
Standard Disclamer -- The opinions expessed here are my own. They do not
represent official advice or opinions of Cornell Cooperative Extension
or Cornell University.
John Udall,
Programmer/Systems Administrator 40 Warren Hall
Extension Electronic Technologies Group Cornell University
Cornell Cooperative Extension Ithaca, NY 14853
email: jsu1@cornell.edu Phone: (607) 255-8127
Received on Thursday, 9 October 1997 11:37:24 UTC