Re: Valid use of <embed> in HTML4

David Dorward, Fri, 5 Feb 2010 15:08:09 +0000:
> On 5 Feb 2010, at 14:59, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
>> David Dorward, Fri, 5 Feb 2010 14:39:00 +0000:
>>> On 5 Feb 2010, at 14:31, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:

>>>> 	<!-- -- -->
>>>> 	<embed src="http://example.org/" ></embed>
>>>> 	<!-- -- -->
>>> 
>>> Some browsers (Slightly older versions of Opera for example) 

> would be somewhere around version 8.

Ok.
 
>    <!-- -->
>    Not commented out
>    <!-- -->
>    
>    <!-- -- -->
>    Commented out
>    <!-- -- -->
> 
> in Firefox 3.6.  Only the text "Not commented out" is displayed.

Conditional comments for Firefox. ;-) Full support for SGML comments in 
Firefox, is pretty new, btw:

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/SGMLComments.html

Same page: ]] future HTML versions will not require SGML comments. 
Browsers that have implemented them are now expected to remove their 
support for SGML comments, for all HTML versions. [[

And if they do remove this support, they will simultaneously make HTML4 
more and more de facto "extensible" ... Validator also has no warnings 
about use of SGML comments ... (But that might come, of course.)

> So your example would successfully hide the embed element from Firefox.

Since Firefox 3.6 works adequately with OBJECT, this is not a problem.
 
>>> ... which just goes to show that writing deliberately bad HTML in 
>>> order to hide other deliberately bad HTML from QA tools is A Bad Idea.
>> 
>> Well, one must always test in order to be sure that it works ...
> 
> Good luck with testing in every version of every browser out there.

Already in progress: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/sgml/doctypeSGML.html

> Write code to the standard. Test common browsers to make sure that 
> their bugs don't break the site. Don't give browsers you aren't 
> testing something that *shouldn't* work.

The proper advice w.r.t. SGML comments is to only use XHTML comments. 
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Friday, 5 February 2010 20:47:23 UTC