[whatwg] Issues concerning the <base> element and xml:base

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:23:54 +0200, Jonas Sicking <jonas at sicking.cc> wrote:
>> Please don't introduce more quirks mode nonsense. We have more than  
>> enough already as it is.
>
> I'm not saying that we should add it to the spec. I'm saying that  
> firefox might be able to remove support for the weird <base> behavior in  
> standards mode, while retaining it in quirks mode.

My point is that the specification will eventually have to match  
implementations (including quirks mode) so in theory a new browser can  
enter the market more easily. It also makes the web as a "format" more  
open. Introducing more differences between standards and quirks mode makes  
the format harder to implement and harder to predict (for authors).


> I dislike quirks mode stuff too, but any other choice isn't very pretty  
> here either. I can see 3 possible solutions:
>
> 1. What we do now, i.e. support multiple <base> elements in both quirks
>     and standards mode. If the spec will not support multiple <base> then
>     this would make us non-compliant with the spec.
>
> 2. Not support multiple <base> elements in either quirks nor standards
>     mode. This would break a lot of pages (36000 in hixies test) for
>     no really good reason since very little code is needed to deal with
>     it.
>
> 3. Only support multiple <base> elements in quirks mode but not standard
>     mode.
>
> Pick your poison.

I suppose 1 would be the option I pick although I wonder how long it takes  
before that starts breaking stuff too if people code towards the new IE7.


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>