Chris, Innovation is fine - but innovating behind the scenes in an open environment where authors want their web content to run on multiple operating systems and browsers results in incompatibility. The end result is a lot of bloated coat with a lot of if-the-elses or suffer from incompatibility. Speaking from a company that wants to deliver IT as I described, I can also that this drives up the cost of development though you think you are being innovative. After all, your intent with IE8 was to deliver a standards mode which should allow for much more portability across browsers and reduces the amount of JavaScript through support of more advanced CSS features.
So, I don't believe Microsoft was trying to do anything wrong but I would suggest that you might want to think about being more open with the other browser manufacturers in this space going forward. As a deliverer of IT and a Microsoft customer I would very much appreciate it. Rich Rich Schwerdtfeger Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist Chair, IBM Accessibility Architecture Review Board blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/schwer Chris Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 03/14/2008 01:04 PM To Aaron M Leventhal/Cambridge/[EMAIL PROTECTED] cc Anne van Kesteren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Charles McCathieNevile <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Cullen Sauls <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Dave Pawson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Jon Gunderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Marc Silbey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, David Poehlman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Richard Schwerdtfeger/Austin/[EMAIL PROTECTED], Simon Pieters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Subject RE: IE8 incompatibility issues (was: Re: Issue: IE 8 adds new DOM Properties for ARIA -- not compatible with other impls) Actually, for HTML 4.01 it’s not really a problem, because the HTML DOM details all the HTML attributes. J As previously stated, I want to get to an interoperable point here. However, I would point out that “If it's not in a speci do not support it or you break everyone else.” would prevent all innovation outside Recommendation status. From: Aaron M Leventhal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 10:55 AM To: Chris Wilson Cc: Anne van Kesteren; Charles McCathieNevile; Cullen Sauls; Dave Pawson; Jon Gunderson; Marc Silbey; David Poehlman; Richard Schwerdtfeger; Simon Pieters; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [email protected] Subject: RE: IE8 incompatibility issues (was: Re: Issue: IE 8 adds new DOM Properties for ARIA -- not compatible with other impls) I think we could say it's useful but the problem is it's not spec'd. So authors that use it will get broken content everywhere but IE. This isn't an ARIA-specific issue. Since it's arguably useful you could try to get attribute mirroring into the relevant specs. If it's not in a speci do not support it or you break everyone else. - Aaron Chris Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 03/14/2008 01:47 PM To Simon Pieters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Marc Silbey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Anne van Kesteren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Dave Pawson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> cc Cullen Sauls <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Jon Gunderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Aaron M Leventhal/Cambridge/[EMAIL PROTECTED], Charles McCathieNevile <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, David Poehlman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "[email protected]" <[email protected]>, Richard Schwerdtfeger/Austin/[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject RE: IE8 incompatibility issues (was: Re: Issue: IE 8 adds new DOM Properties for ARIA -- not compatible with other impls) Simon Pieters [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >I understand that IE works this way internally, but this behavior -- that >all attributes are reflected by DOM attributes and that any DOM attributes >(or JS properties) on elements also turn into real attributes -- is not >backed up by any DOM spec, and Opera, Safari and Firefox don't do this. In >those browsers, unknown attributes are only accessible with >getAttribute(), and saying elm.foobar = 'x' just creates a JS property >"foobar" without adding/changing the "foobar" attribute on the element. IIRC, this does not necessarily happen with unknown attributes - only with known attributes. If it's a known attribute, it gets reflected into the DOM with camelCasing. If it's an unknown/unrecognized attribute, it is only accessible via getAttribute(). -Chris
