[whatwg] [web-apps] Some comments

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, Matthew Raymond wrote:
> 
>    Obviously, unsupported Javascript objects can't degrade, but I think 
> the only ones defined so far in WA1 are those that already exist and are 
> widely used by multiple browsers.

While obviously things that are already supported have priority, I expect 
we will be adding new interfaces. (e.g. the stuff in WF2 for forms, and 
the canvas stuff in WA1.)


>    The idea isn't to prevent webmasters from creating markup that 
> doesn't degrade gracefully. The idea is to allow webmasters to create 
> markup that degrades gracefully but still had the new functionality in 
> compliant browsers.

Right. Exactly.


>    What, then, makes using WAML any different from using XUL + HTML4? If 
> WAML requires a compliant browser simply to be used, why even bother 
> developing it when you can use XUL 1.0 right now? If you're going to 
> throw graceful degradation out the window, better to create a 
> standardized subset of XUL, a language which has already seen practical 
> use in tandem with CSS and which supports just about any widget you 
> might need. It should be noted, however, that this would be beyond the 
> scope of the WHAT WG's charter.

Yup. If backwards compatibility is not an issue, then XForms, XUL, Flex, 
SVG, Flash, etc, all exist already.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'