[whatwg] Specs for window.atob() and window.btoa()

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 1:19 PM, Jorge <jorge at jorgechamorro.com> wrote:
> On the other hand, it will be so forever

Correct, it will be.

> unless the spec says *not* to throw but to skip over instead, so that in a few years the cleanup can be ~safely skipped.

Nope.  The spec isn't going to change browser behavior here if there
are sites that depend on the current behavior -- and reportedly there
are.  There's just no incentive for browsers to change; the proposed
behavior isn't sufficiently superior to warrant even slight
compatibility pain.  We can change web APIs in ways that might cause
some compatibility pain if we have good reason, but for really minor
things like this it's just not worth it.  Browsers can only afford to
break a certain number of websites per release before users start to
get annoyed, and we shouldn't be wasting it on things like this.

(IMO as a non-implementer, anyway.  My opinion doesn't actually carry
any weight here, though.  I'm just guessing what implementers will
say.)