4 ms·

> drop support for standards alert was never a W3C standard. It was a non-standard browser feature that happened to be widely implemented in the early days of

> drop support for standards alert was never a W3C standard. It was a non-standard browser feature that happened to be widely implemented in the early days of the web. It was never part of any planned/agreed addition of well-thought-out features to the web. The only time it has been "standardized" is when the WHATWG recently decided it would be a good idea to describe the behaviour of all the legacy non-standard browser APIs that have been lying around in browser implementations since the early days of Javascript's existence. The WHATWG have strictly described this behaviour for alert within the "User Prompts" section of the HTML specification: a new section to describe an ancient function.

0x0nyandesu 5y ago
It being part of every browser makes it a defacto standard.
- lucideer 5y ago
  If it were only a defacto standard I'd say they'd be even more justified in deprecation. It is now an actual standard though; I was just pointing out the history and reasoning behind its addition to the current standard. Given its WHATWG policy to define and codify the behaviour of every feature ever added broadly, if we believe no standard should ever be deprecated we'll never be able to deprecate anything at all and be stuck with every bad decision ever made.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Are you equally mad about moves to eliminate cross-origin cookies? That was part of every browser.
BulgarianIdiot 5y ago
W3C doesn't matter much, WHATWG is the spec we follow, W3C just chases after them. So don't equate "standards" with "W3C standards".
- SahAssar 5y ago
  For some specs, yes, for others no. For example, WHATWG does not do the ECMAScript spec (that's https://tc39.es/ https://tc39.es/), or CSS (that is W3C). There are many other web specs that are still only done at W3C, the only ones to move to WHATWG are the ones listed here: https://spec.whatwg.org/ https://spec.whatwg.org/
- lucideer 5y ago
  not sure where I equated standards with W3C standards.
  - BulgarianIdiot 5y ago
    You implied that when you responded to your parent comment quoting their remark about following standards, and you said alert is not a W3C standard but it's just described by WHATWG. If you want to interpret your own comments in another self-consistent way, please elaborate.
throw_m239339 5y ago
> alert was never a W3C standard. Neither was Javascript.
Zababa 5y ago
> alert was never a W3C standard. It was a non-standard browser feature that happened to be widely implemented in the early days of the web. It was never part of any planned/agreed addition of well-thought-out features to the web. That's the case for flatten too, it was just a widely used library, but the point is not to respect the standards but to not break the web.
- lucideer 5y ago
  > not break the web. Oh how times change. It's not so long since this infamous sentiment (as espoused by one much more infamous browser vendor) was widely seen as the regressive excuse it is. A technology that is not iterative is representative of a community that cannot learn.

0x0nyandesu 5y ago

It being part of every browser makes it a defacto standard.

lucideer 5y ago
If it were only a defacto standard I'd say they'd be even more justified in deprecation. It is now an actual standard though; I was just pointing out the history and reasoning behind its addition to the current standard. Given its WHATWG policy to define and codify the behaviour of every feature ever added broadly, if we believe no standard should ever be deprecated we'll never be able to deprecate anything at all and be stuck with every bad decision ever made.
UncleMeat 5y ago
Are you equally mad about moves to eliminate cross-origin cookies? That was part of every browser.

BulgarianIdiot 5y ago

W3C doesn't matter much, WHATWG is the spec we follow, W3C just chases after them. So don't equate "standards" with "W3C standards".

SahAssar 5y ago
For some specs, yes, for others no. For example, WHATWG does not do the ECMAScript spec (that's https://tc39.es/ https://tc39.es/), or CSS (that is W3C). There are many other web specs that are still only done at W3C, the only ones to move to WHATWG are the ones listed here: https://spec.whatwg.org/ https://spec.whatwg.org/
lucideer 5y ago
not sure where I equated standards with W3C standards.
- BulgarianIdiot 5y ago
  You implied that when you responded to your parent comment quoting their remark about following standards, and you said alert is not a W3C standard but it's just described by WHATWG. If you want to interpret your own comments in another self-consistent way, please elaborate.

throw_m239339 5y ago

> alert was never a W3C standard. Neither was Javascript.

Zababa 5y ago

> alert was never a W3C standard. It was a non-standard browser feature that happened to be widely implemented in the early days of the web. It was never part of any planned/agreed addition of well-thought-out features to the web. That's the case for flatten too, it was just a widely used library, but the point is not to respect the standards but to not break the web.

lucideer 5y ago
> not break the web. Oh how times change. It's not so long since this infamous sentiment (as espoused by one much more infamous browser vendor) was widely seen as the regressive excuse it is. A technology that is not iterative is representative of a community that cannot learn.