[whatwg] Fakepath revisited

[Simon Pieters]

On Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:23:37 +0200, Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24 at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 1:29 AM, Smylers<Smylers at stripey.com> wrote:
>>> Like other compatibility mode behavior, implementation would be
>>> voluntary and not governed by the W3C.
>>
>> What "other compatibility mode behavior"?
>
> IE has a huge "Compatibility View" and lots of additional settings
> available. Firefox also has some about:config options available to
> tweak behavior, and Opera has their site blacklist.

Our experience is that one behavior everywhere is preferable (it's more  
predictable, it's easier to test, it's less risk of introducing bugs,  
etc), and we try hard to have one behavior for all rendering modes for all  
sites and for both HTML and XML. We generally only have differences when  
we really have to for compatibility or for spec compliance.


> But even without
> adding such settings to the browser, bookmarklets and other tools can
> help users work around poorly designed pages.

In general, users don't use bookmarklets or other tools to work around  
poorly designed pages.


> In some cases, just
> temporarily disabling JavaScript may fix the problem.

In general, users don't try disabling javascript.


>> Unfortunately that's pretty much the modus operandi of HTML 5:
>> standardizing previous stupidities so that we can all share in them.
>
> Yes, we need a standard. Currently there are two competing behaviors,
> each backed by multiple major browser vendors.

It should be noted that both IE and Opera first tried to use just the  
filename, but independently found that it was incompatible with existing  
content.


> Ian wants to
> standardize on the stupider behavior and expects the remaining browsers
> to implement it. That's going to be a problem.

Expecting Opera and IE to switch back to the incompatible behavior is not  
less of a problem.

-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software