Re: Deviations from Standards

[Wesley Moy]

At first glance, I am tempted to say, No, that's wrong; those are not proper tags.� After thinking it over, this is what I have to say:

All HTML documents should (I wouldn't know about �must�) use a DOCTYPE declaration. Under each version of HTML, there is a set number of tags that are defined in the DTD. While an unknown document (like if someone comes from the future with XHTML 10 or something) will invariably have many unknown tags, they are valid if they exist in the DTD (or XML schema or something).

What is being debated is Mozilla's support for the tags. While the tags are arguably invalid, Mozilla shouldn't really use any tags at all without knowing what type of document it is (with a DOCTYPE, like I said earlier). For example, the XHTML 1.1 doctype should not support the <frame> tag. Because embed, nobr, marquee, et cetera were never in a DTD to start with, Mozilla shouldn't really be doing anything with them; that is, Mozilla should ignore them as unknown tags.

I do believe that these tags are in violation to standard HTML. As such, Mozilla should not be supporting their use. Still, I believe their *limited* support will be useful in the extremely short term.