[whatwg] Empty elements

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 15 Feb 2006, David Hyatt wrote:
>
> BTW, not sure if you have this in the WhatWG parsing spec, but a stray 
> </p> (that does not match some opening <p>) has to be treated like an 
> open <p>.

It's listed as something that we might want to consider if we spec quirks 
mode. I'm considering just doing it always, but Mozilla doesn't do it in 
Standards mode. IE does it for a whole bunch more elements than just </p> 
and </br>, but I haven't quite worked out the algorithm IE uses to decide 
when it should do it and when it shouldn't. Mozilla just does it for </p> 
and </br> in quirks mode. Safari just does it for </p>, but in all modes.

BTW, an unmatched </p> is treated like <p></p>, not just like <p>.


> Also, <script src="..."/> is actually supported even in HTML by Firefox 
> and Safari.

Safari maybe. Not Firefox:

   http://software.hixie.ch/utilities/js/live-dom-viewer/?%3C%21DOCTYPE%20html%3E%3Cscript%20src%3D%22y%22/%3Ex%3C/script%3E

This is a compatibility problem for Safari, because it makes Safari 
incompatible with IE, Mozilla, and Opera.


> We're stuck with it forever as well, since most of the Dashboard widgets 
> use <script src="..."/> in HTML. You can say we're wrong in the spec, 
> but we won't be able to change it. :(

That, I'm afraid, is your problem. You may wish to consider having a 
dashboard mode. <canvas>x</canvas> is also parsed differently in Safari 
than in Mozilla and Opera; again, you may need a Dashboard parse mode if 
you ever want to switch to the HTML5 way of parsing <canvas>. (Existing 
Web content has started relying on the HTML5 way.)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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