[whatwg] Suggested changes to Web Forms 2.0, 2004-07-01 working

[Matthew Raymond]

Jim Ley wrote:

> On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 22:42:43 +0000 (UTC), Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>>On Mon, 19 Jul 2004, Jim Ley wrote:
>>>On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 07:54:02 +0000 (UTC), Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>>>>It is the concensus of the members.
>>>
>>>How was this consensus reached?
>>
>>Over a beer in a San Jose bar, if I'm not mistaken.
> 
> I thought the process was open, and the only communication method was
> the mailing list - but we've gone over this...

    Yes, we have, and might I remind you that you did ask when the 
consensus was reached in the context of the WHATWG members, not with 
regard to the mailing list.

>>>As I've said before, I do not feel HTC's are an appropriate mechanism
>>>for providing this sort of support in a release environment.
>>
>>Nobody is forcing you to use HTCs. :-) Just don't stop anyone else from
>>using them.
> 
> I'm not, you're rejecting the built in extension mechanisms of HTML,
> because of dubious requirements about HTC's.  This is my problem. 
> There's still a reason to use HTC's with the object solution, it's
> just not obvious with OBJECT in your examples.

    The <object> tag is not a mechanism for extending HTML. It's a way 
of accessing objects that's external to HTML. Your suggestion that 
<object> be used for all WF2 controls is not only technically 
questionable, but it robs the markup of any semantic meaning, since 
<object> refers to objects external to HTML.

>>>So it's the expectation of the WHAT-WG that users of Mozilla, Safari and
>>>Opera will get a severely degraded experience unless they upgrade their
>>>browsers?  Well as I said before - it's one way to drive Opera sales.
>>
>>Oddly enough, Opera, Mozilla and Apple do not think it is unusual for them
>>to add new features to their products and hope that existing users of
>>previous version of those products upgrade to the new releases. In fact,
>>when we researched this, we discovered it was standard industry practice,
>>and a good way to stay in business.
> 
> So it is to drive Opera sales?    

    Yeah, I just hate it when companies create a better product that I 
just have to have. They should give us the new and improved products for 
free. Heck, they should drive around in a big dump truck full of money, 
shoveling hundred dollar bills out the back.

>>We wouldn't really have to worry about back-compat at all if it wasn't for
>>Microsoft stalling IE development, 
> 
> I got upgrades to IE just last week, I saw lots of jobs on the IE team
> advertised last week - in fact they're recruiting more than Opera -
> doesn't look stalled to me - so what's the point of worrying about it
> now?

    I don't care how many programmers they hire, it's not in their best 
interests to make web apps more viable, nor have they stated that they 
will improve IE in any way that would make web apps more viable. All we 
know for certain is that they're improving more security and protection 
from spam. Their recent uptick in browser development is more a reaction 
to slipping browser dominance than a true desire to improve web 
standards support.