On 14/10/2009 04:41, Ian Hickson wrote:
On Tue, 29 Sep 2009, Dean Edwards wrote:
It's going to take a while for IE7 to go away. In the meantime it
becomes an education issue -- "You can start using HTML5 except
<details> which will look OK in some browsers but completely break
others."
...and except for<canvas> which will be slow or not work in IE for the
forseeable future, and the drag and drop model's "draggable" attribute
which will only work in new browsers, or the new controls which will look
like text fields in legacy UAs, or... how is<details> different?
The other things you mentioned don't work but don't break anything.
Using <details> can potentially break entire pages.
Can't we just invent some new elements? We've already created 20 new
ones. Two more won't hurt. :)
We have more than a dozen elements whose names would be appropriate here.
Inventing entirely new elements to do the same thing again just to work
around a very short-term problem is just silly.
I don't think it is silly to prevent severe rendering problems in 30% of
installed browsers.
As far as I can see the options are as follows:
1. Drop support for<details> and<figure> for now, revisit it later.
2. Use<legend>, and don't expect to be able to use it in any browsers
sanely for a few years.
3. Use<dt>/<dd>, and don't expect to be able to use it in old versions
of IE without rather complicated and elaborate hacks for a few years.
4. Invent a new element with a weird name (since all the good names are
taken already), and don't expect to be able to use it in IE without
hacks for a few years.
I am not convinced of the wisdom of #4. I prefer #2 long term, but I see
the argument for #3.
If we go with #3, I can always add a "Best viewed with Firefox" badge to
my web sites. That will solve the problem.
-dean
