M. David Peterson wrote:
On Thu, 02 Aug 2007 18:06:09 -0600, Abel Braaksma
<abel(_dot_)online(_at_)xs4all(_dot_)nl> wrote:
the opposite is also true: <br /> should not be written as <br></br>
because, you guessed it right, IE cannot handle it well
Is this really something that should be seen as a problem with IE,
however? Isn't this part of the HTML spec? I realize that its a bit
silly that not using a closing script element breaks the page, but IE
is certainly not the only browser on the planet that enforces quirky
rules that don't seem to make any sense. In addition, with as much
flack that IE has received for being overly generous in rendering
tag-soup is it really fair to then take a "they need to be more
generous in what they are willing to render and what they are not"?
That said, the only reason I use IE anymore is for testing so I do
recognize the fact that it's less than perfect in a lot of ways. I
just think that its a bit harsh to be taking a "because IE can't
handle it" instead of a "because that is the way the spec was written"
which unless I am completely off base is really the correct response
in *MOST* cases.
I agree to all your points. When I put down that line I thought it was a
bit too much of IE-blaming. FF has its quirks, definitely with
XSLT-to-HTML in-place rendering (and even more definitely so when trying
to use inline styles of a certain type, which don't get rendered, but is
a bad design anyway, so who cares).
About the spec thing, isn't it something from SGML heritage? I mean,
didn't XML introduce the shortcut <br /> for <br></br> thus disallowing
the SGML <br> on itself (without closing tag)? And wasn't it also SGML
heritage that allowed <option selected> and XML forced more strict rules
and made it <option selected="selected">?
I didn't look at it like this before, but you have a strong point with
your story on standards. Considering that the predecessor of IE was NCSA
Mosaic (I believe MS bought them) which started out in 1992, way before
XML. And even when XML came about, it was not immediately obvious that
it would replace HTML. It was only way later that XHTML came about and
by that time, browsers were already quite based on the HTML (read: SGML
heritage) standards. And we're still struggling to get rid of our past ;)
Cheers
-- Abel Braaksma
PS: I hoped that IE7 would be a huge overhaul, and MS claims to be rid
of any NCSA Mosaic legacy code, but my experiences so far were quite
disappointing when it came to rendering and standards (old/new doesn't
matter) support.
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