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For some reason the first thing that comes into my head is, "we have always been at war with Eastasia." Bizarre Orwellian statements aside, this is a terrible

by benwerd 16y ago

For some reason the first thing that comes into my head is, "we have always been at war with Eastasia." Bizarre Orwellian statements aside, this is a terrible move unless you're sitting in a development bubble. I can totally get behind HTML being constantly developed. Of course it is. But you need to take snapshots to act as reference points for the rest of us. Some of us kind of want to support users who might not be on the latest and greatest platform. Do browsers have version numbers? Yes. HTML should too. (Ideally, browsers should also report what version of HTML they support on their About page. That'd be rad. But I don't think we're going to see it any time soon.)

thristian 16y ago
That was exactly the first thing that came into my head too. The trouble with declaring a particular revision of HTML as 'supported' is that a standard as complex as HTML (or ECMAScript, or CSS) has many parts, and it's quite possible to correctly and completely support some parts and not others. For example, HTML 4 defines that tables can have a <col> element with an "align" attribute that declares the visual alignment of cells in that column. HTML 4 became a recommendation in December 1999, and yet I know of no browser that supports the "align" attribute on <col> elements. Does that mean that every browser has to mark HTML 4 as 'not supported'?
annevk 16y ago
You are assuming browsers implement a particular version of HTML. They do not. I work for a browser vendor (Opera) and what actually happens is that we keep getting closer to interoperability with each release. I.e. add support for EventSource, fix several bugs in the HTML parser, etc. Software (and in particular the browser market) is not the same as a screwdriver. You do not bring it to market once and it is ready. It incrementally evolves over time and keeps getting better and better (when done right). To counter Orwellian developments we have version control: http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker

by benwerd 16y ago

thristian 16y ago

That was exactly the first thing that came into my head too. The trouble with declaring a particular revision of HTML as 'supported' is that a standard as complex as HTML (or ECMAScript, or CSS) has many parts, and it's quite possible to correctly and completely support some parts and not others. For example, HTML 4 defines that tables can have a <col> element with an "align" attribute that declares the visual alignment of cells in that column. HTML 4 became a recommendation in December 1999, and yet I know of no browser that supports the "align" attribute on <col> elements. Does that mean that every browser has to mark HTML 4 as 'not supported'?

annevk 16y ago

You are assuming browsers implement a particular version of HTML. They do not. I work for a browser vendor (Opera) and what actually happens is that we keep getting closer to interoperability with each release. I.e. add support for EventSource, fix several bugs in the HTML parser, etc. Software (and in particular the browser market) is not the same as a screwdriver. You do not bring it to market once and it is ready. It incrementally evolves over time and keeps getting better and better (when done right). To counter Orwellian developments we have version control: http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker