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

[Daniel Glazman]

On 11/03/2007 13:11, Mihai Sucan wrote:

> 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.

Just as a reminder, and I am an old monkey in the world of standards
bodies, a standard body is not only a cool place where friendly geeks
meet, drink (sometimes) free beer, and write standards for the beauty
of standards.

A standards body is a battlefield, where organizations want to push
THEIR OWN competitive advantage, be the first one to blabla, the best
one to blabla, where they hope to be THE solution's provider when
multiple solutions are on the table because THEY can implement it before
others.

And yes, same thing for the WHAT-WG modulo the fact browser vendors
are in good agreement here.

Standardization is a rather fair game, despite of being sometimes
a violent one, and Microsoft is like others here.

As a reminder too, the IE team went from /dev/null to A BIG TEAM.
Even if IE7 is not what many would call a "2007 browser", it's still
pushing the community and forcing us to remain active and reactive.
Diversity is good for the web ecosystem. IE7 is most welcome.

Last point, without IE, CSS wouldn't be what it is today. Without IE,
many W3C standards including the DOM would not be what they are today.
I can't count how many clever ideas Microsoft submitted to W3C WGs.

Please stop seeing the Great Evil Empire or you won't be able to
sit with them at a standardization table...

</Daniel>