4 ms·

Web developers code to Web browsers, so bugs in Web browsers lead to sites depending on those bugs, making those bugs unfixable unless you have developers testi

by roca 9y ago

Web developers code to Web browsers, so bugs in Web browsers lead to sites depending on those bugs, making those bugs unfixable unless you have developers testing in multiple browsers. Spec bugs don't become unfixable that way.

Leszek 9y ago
Though spec bugs go the opposite way: if you discover an issue in the spec, then it is very difficult to change it because someone somewhere may have been - at the time correctly - relying on that behaviour.
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  Or, you could just be Google, and change your browser to work the way you want, and ignore all the pages breaking by insisting that the change is "within spec", giving a big middle finger to anyone that complains.
- roca 9y ago
  Web developers can only rely on a spec bug if the browsers they test with actually implement that bug. So it still comes down to what browsers implement, not what the spec says.
vbezhenar 9y ago
It doesn't have to be this way. Apple doesn't have fear of breaking old apps sometimes, for example, and they are successful. I think that absurd backwards compatibility should be considered harmful and some breakage should be normal. It's always possible to install old browser into virtual machine, if content is so precious.
- tolien 9y ago
  Apple doesn’t have the competitive pressure that I can take my broken iOS app and run it somewhere else as-is, or tell my customers to do that. “It works in Chrome” (and previously IE) is a real issue and the browser that broke compatibility like that would have to be supported (potentially through the coercive power of its own market share - see the initial “any open source browser versus IE is a good thing” switching to “we need multiple browser engines, even if they’re all open source”) by the others or face irrelevance.

4 ms·

Web developers code to Web browsers, so bugs in Web browsers lead to sites depending on those bugs, making those bugs unfixable unless you have developers testi

by roca 9y ago

Leszek 9y ago
Though spec bugs go the opposite way: if you discover an issue in the spec, then it is very difficult to change it because someone somewhere may have been - at the time correctly - relying on that behaviour.
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  Or, you could just be Google, and change your browser to work the way you want, and ignore all the pages breaking by insisting that the change is "within spec", giving a big middle finger to anyone that complains.
- roca 9y ago
  Web developers can only rely on a spec bug if the browsers they test with actually implement that bug. So it still comes down to what browsers implement, not what the spec says.
vbezhenar 9y ago
It doesn't have to be this way. Apple doesn't have fear of breaking old apps sometimes, for example, and they are successful. I think that absurd backwards compatibility should be considered harmful and some breakage should be normal. It's always possible to install old browser into virtual machine, if content is so precious.
- tolien 9y ago
  Apple doesn’t have the competitive pressure that I can take my broken iOS app and run it somewhere else as-is, or tell my customers to do that. “It works in Chrome” (and previously IE) is a real issue and the browser that broke compatibility like that would have to be supported (potentially through the coercive power of its own market share - see the initial “any open source browser versus IE is a good thing” switching to “we need multiple browser engines, even if they’re all open source”) by the others or face irrelevance.