Re: standard out of the box

Alex wrote:

 > > It is to be decided how exactly you get into standards mode. It
 > > sounds like what you are suggesting is that IE8 is standard by
 > > default, and that it abandons compatibility with its previous
 > > versions. Is this what you think would be best for the web?

This is not what I'm proposing. I'm proposing that the switches into
standards mode -- which Acid2 also uses -- continues to work in IE8.
Otherwise we could end up in absurd situations where Microsoft says:
"we cannot render acid2 correctly by default because that would break
the page" :-)

 > > Don't get me wrong, I don't have any attachment to quirks mode. I
 > > would love to use standards everywhere. But certainly, if we just
 > > drop quirks mode, we'll break millions of pages. Somehow we have
 > > to be able to tell that a page is actually designed for
 > > standards.

Yes, and there are well-documented switches for this.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode

 > > What do you think is the right way to decide if a page will not
 > > be broken if rendered in 100% standard mode?

I think pages that switch into standards mode expect to be rendered in
standards mode.

fantasai wrote:

 > I would suggest that any doctype that triggers full standards mode
 > in Mozilla, Opera, and Safari would be a good candidate for triggering
 > full standards mode in IE8.

I second this proposal.

Note that there is very little difference between IE7 and the other
browsers -- Opera9 is actually closer to IE7 in a few cases. 

This approach is also consistent with Microsoft's documentation which
describes the behavior in IE6 and later:

  The following table shows which values of the !DOCTYPE declaration
  switch on standards-compliant mode with Internet Explorer 6 or
  later.

  Label	Definition        URL present   URL not present
  No !DOCTYPE present             Off    Off
  HTML (No Version Present)       Off    Off
  HTML 2.0                        Off    Off
  HTML 3.0                        Off    Off
  HTML 3.2                        Off    Off
  HTML 4.0 No Definition Present  On     On
  HTML 4.0 Frameset               On     Off
  HTML 4.0 Transitional           On     Off
  HTML 4.0 Strict                 On     On
  XHTML                           On     On
  XML                             On     On
  Unrecognized !DOCTYPE           On     On

  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb250395.aspx#cssenhancements_topic2

Cheers,

-h&kon
              Håkon Wium Lie                          CTO °þe®ª
howcome@opera.com                  http://people.opera.com/howcome

Received on Thursday, 20 December 2007 19:47:06 UTC