[whatwg] Using the HTML5 DOCTYPE as a new quirksmode switch

Sun Mar 11 05:11:01 PDT 2007

Le Sun, 11 Mar 2007 02:45:18 +0200, Alexey Feldgendler  
<alexey at feldgendler.ru> a écrit:

> Not necessarily. For a long time, Microsoft has been in a position where  
> they benefit from the lack of interoperability with other browsers. They  
> had no incentive to make their browser standards-compliant. Now times  
> have changed, and even Microsoft, as far as I understand, is now willing  
> to improve their standards compliance. So I don't think that the  
> standards-mode story will repeat -- this happened before due to browser  
> wars, where interoperability has been broken intentionally.

Yes I understand that, however I am skeptical about Microsoft Internet  
Explorer. I do not really believe they stopped wanting to dominate the web  
browsers market, and suddenly they'll just make a good web browser. They  
will create lockins, traps, and other tricks, to lock beginners in a  
Microsoftish World Wide Web.

Until further proof, I shall maintain my stance.

IE 7 is not such proof. It would have been a good start, in 2002-2003.

>> Instead of using this DOCTYPE switch, I was even thinking of  
>> conditional comments, DOM document property, etc. Yet, other methods  
>> only add complications. If Microsoft considers adding a new rendering  
>> mode as a must, such that it will not break many sites, then this  
>> DOCTYPE is an elegant solution. History will repeat itself, no matter  
>> how elegant the solution might be.
>
> Conditonal comments and similar approaches solve another kind of  
> problem: how to allow making pages which do the right thing in good  
> browsers but still function in older browsers. OTOH, the DOCTYPE switch  
> allows the browser to do the right thing for good pages without breaking  
> the old pages.

Hence I consider the <!DOCTYPE html> a good and elegant solution for  
switching to the "strict standards mode" (even if I do not support it). I  
do not like the other proposals in this thread.

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