456 Berea Street
3rd May 2007, 12:55 am
After joining the W3C HTML Working Group (http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200704/joining_the_w3c_html_working_group/) a few weeks ago I've been spending some time every day reading the discussion on the public-html mailing list (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/). I have also been reading the WHATWG HTML 5 Working Draft (http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/) to get a better understanding of what everybody is talking about on the list. It can be quite hard at times.
One thing that I simply could not understand at first was the proposed design principle (http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/ProposedDesignPrinciples) once called "Don't Break The Web" and later renamed to "Support Existing Content", which is often referred to. I found it really confusing. How could anything break just because a new version of HTML is published? Browsers would still treat old content the way they do now, right?
Or so I thought, but that is not the plan. From the Conformance requirements (http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/section-conformance.html) section of the WHATWG HTML 5 specification (which has been proposed as a starting point for the new W3C HTML specification):
Web browsers that support HTML must process documents labelled as text/html as described in this specification, so that users can interact with them.
So, as soon as a Web browser claims to support HTML 5, it is required to treat all content served as text/html (which means all HTML and nearly all XHTML) as HTML 5.
I'm not sure if I think that is actually a good thing or not, but it does explain what "Don't Break The Web" means.
Anyway, I hope that helps clear things up if anyone else was confused by this.
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More... (http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200705/browsers_will_treat_all_versions_of_html_as_html_5/)
One thing that I simply could not understand at first was the proposed design principle (http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/ProposedDesignPrinciples) once called "Don't Break The Web" and later renamed to "Support Existing Content", which is often referred to. I found it really confusing. How could anything break just because a new version of HTML is published? Browsers would still treat old content the way they do now, right?
Or so I thought, but that is not the plan. From the Conformance requirements (http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/section-conformance.html) section of the WHATWG HTML 5 specification (which has been proposed as a starting point for the new W3C HTML specification):
Web browsers that support HTML must process documents labelled as text/html as described in this specification, so that users can interact with them.
So, as soon as a Web browser claims to support HTML 5, it is required to treat all content served as text/html (which means all HTML and nearly all XHTML) as HTML 5.
I'm not sure if I think that is actually a good thing or not, but it does explain what "Don't Break The Web" means.
Anyway, I hope that helps clear things up if anyone else was confused by this.
Visit site to read or post comments… (http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200705/browsers_will_treat_all_versions_of_html_as_html_5/#comments)Add 456 Berea Street to your Technorati favorites. (http://technorati.com/faves?add=http://www.456bereastreet.com)
Posted in (X)HTML (http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/categories/xhtml/).
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/456bereastreet?i=WmukGM</img> (http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/456bereastreet?a=WmukGM)
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/456bereastreet?i=uHbKxgNi</img> (http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/456bereastreet?a=uHbKxgNi) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/456bereastreet?i=K5looAc6</img> (http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/456bereastreet?a=K5looAc6) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/456bereastreet?i=aA3GZCG2</img> (http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/456bereastreet?a=aA3GZCG2)
More... (http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200705/browsers_will_treat_all_versions_of_html_as_html_5/)