Comments on: Why is Microsoft trying to distract us with HTML 5? http://inspireaction.mindandmedia.com/2007/12/11/why-is-microsoft-trying-to-distract-us-with-html-5/ A blog about new media, marketing, and communications Sat, 06 Sep 2008 03:45:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: Lachlan Hunt http://inspireaction.mindandmedia.com/2007/12/11/why-is-microsoft-trying-to-distract-us-with-html-5/#comment-5613 Lachlan Hunt Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:30:51 +0000 http://inspireaction.mindandmedia.com/2007/12/11/why-is-microsoft-trying-to-distract-us-with-html-5/#comment-5613 You'll be pleased to know that the HTML5 spec is putting a lot of effort into interoperability issues with HTML. In particular, well defined parsing, error handling and other processing requirements to help ensure all browsers can reliably handle both new and existing content. While it is certainly true that rendering issues are of major concern to web developers, such problems are the domain of CSS, not HTML. It is important that effort be put into improving the support and interoperability of both HTML and CSS, but work on each is being carried out separately. CSS and rending issues are largely out of scope for HTML. Thanks for your feedback. You’ll be pleased to know that the HTML5 spec is putting a lot of effort into interoperability issues with HTML. In particular, well defined parsing, error handling and other processing requirements to help ensure all browsers can reliably handle both new and existing content.

While it is certainly true that rendering issues are of major concern to web developers, such problems are the domain of CSS, not HTML. It is important that effort be put into improving the support and interoperability of both HTML and CSS, but work on each is being carried out separately. CSS and rending issues are largely out of scope for HTML.

Thanks for your feedback.

]]> By: Ian Hickson http://inspireaction.mindandmedia.com/2007/12/11/why-is-microsoft-trying-to-distract-us-with-html-5/#comment-5602 Ian Hickson Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:52:38 +0000 http://inspireaction.mindandmedia.com/2007/12/11/why-is-microsoft-trying-to-distract-us-with-html-5/#comment-5602 Hi. I'm the editor of the HTML5 spec and spokesman for the WHATWG. The new structure elements are actually just a minor part of the work. The biggest part of the work has been defining the edge cases so that we can get all the browsers to converge on one set of rules -- HTML4 doesn't, for instance, define how to handle syntax errors, but HTML5 defines that in detail. We're acutely aware of how authors have problems with different browsers, and we want to resolve that. Regarding Microsoft, it's not clear how we can force them to play by the rules. I'm certainly open to suggestions. If you have any advice on how to make them more compliant, please do e-mail them to me at ian@hixie.ch -- note that I've already tried things like Acid2 (I was the main person who wrote that test) as well as making test suites (I was involved in the Web Standards Project early on, in the "CSS Samurai", as well as having written a massive number of test cases for browsers at http://hixie.ch/tests/ ). Nothing seems to work. Hi. I’m the editor of the HTML5 spec and spokesman for the WHATWG.

The new structure elements are actually just a minor part of the work. The biggest part of the work has been defining the edge cases so that we can get all the browsers to converge on one set of rules — HTML4 doesn’t, for instance, define how to handle syntax errors, but HTML5 defines that in detail. We’re acutely aware of how authors have problems with different browsers, and we want to resolve that.

Regarding Microsoft, it’s not clear how we can force them to play by the rules. I’m certainly open to suggestions. If you have any advice on how to make them more compliant, please do e-mail them to me at ian@hixie.ch — note that I’ve already tried things like Acid2 (I was the main person who wrote that test) as well as making test suites (I was involved in the Web Standards Project early on, in the “CSS Samurai”, as well as having written a massive number of test cases for browsers at http://hixie.ch/tests/ ). Nothing seems to work.

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