[whatwg] HTML 5 : Misconceptions Documented

[Mike Wilson]

Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Jan 2009, Mike Wilson wrote:
> > So I wonder what is your process 
> > for determining if a "quirk" should be included in HTML5 or not?
> 
> It basically boils down to "did Web browser vendors find that if they 
> didn't implement it, enough people complained to justify spending the 
> resources to implement it after all?".

Ah, so your process is really to look at if browser vendors
historically have added special handling for individual quirks
and then mimic "popular" solutions in the spec?

Now I am just being curious ;-) but how on earth do you find
all quirks (and if they have been specially dealt with) - is it
up to reports on the mailing list or are you reading source 
code? :-)

And do you generally find concensus among the non-MS vendors or
are there many quirks that are only worked around in a single 
browser, and how do you handle that?

> > > The idea is to make it so that browsers don't feel forced to 
> > > add _any_ non-standard behavior (other than experimental
> > > innovations using vendor-prefixed names and stuff).

Do you think this will happen with the current popular browsers, 
ie will they actually remove existing code that implements 
workarounds that don't make it into HTML5?
Or will they employ some "legacy vs HTML5" mode switching where
their custom workarounds are only in legacy mode?

I guess what I am really thinking about is whether there will
ever be a "strict to standard" HTML5 implementation, or a
reference implementation, that stays exactly on what is written
in (or easily interpolated from) the HTML5 spec...?

> Feel free to add questions to the FAQ, even without answers; 
> someone will fill them in! :-)

Magic! :-)

Best regards
Mike