Re: Selecting for features

On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 5:03 PM, David Woolley <forums@david-woolley.me.uk>wrote:

> Adrian Price wrote:
>
>> I apologize if this is an issue that's been raised before - I was amazed
>>
>
> It has; many times.
>
> That's what I would have thought -- can you point me to any past
discussion/decision?


>
>  that various searches didn't turn up anything - but is there any plan
>>
>
> Sounds like you need a better search engine.
>
> I tried Google and the archive search for this mailing list with a few
different searches, but no luck. So, I guess maybe Google and the W3C need
better search engines.


>  for functionality within CSS to select for browser support for a given
>> feature or feature set? CSS3 Media Queries allow selecting for screen
>>
>
> Part of the problem is that browser vendors will be economical with the
> truth.  Marketing people always have an over-optimistic view of the
> compliance of their product, and will always give themselves the benefit of
> the doubt in borderline cases.  Also, changing the compliance statement, to
> remove false claims that are exposed, is likely to a very low priority for
> the developers.
>
> Certainly, but that's already an issue. We already have browser vendors
claiming full compliance when that's not necessarily the case; they just do
it in marketing rather than in code. I don't see a way that the option to
select for features would make things worse, other than the possibility that
designers would put too much faith in the browser vendors; something that
can't be controlled for and is also likely to be outweighed by the
advantages. At the very least, it would let designers control for different
versions of the browsers that do accurately report compliance, reducing the
set of browsers they'll have to find workarounds for.


> --
> David Woolley
> Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
> RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
> that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.
>