

Re: Fresh start? Re: Minimal Browser Capabilities

From: Jim Ley <jim@jibbering.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2001 01:49:42 -0000
Message-ID: <01ba01c18f42$13d627a0$dc4001d5@7020CT>
"Kynn Bartlett":
> There is an increasing argument to be made that
> JavaScript is standardizable enough that some subset of basic
> JavaScript must be supported.
> So, it looks like the list I'd draw up, as a start, would be:
> * ECMAscript (plus W3C DOM?)

Without a DOM, ECMAScript would be pointless, indeed it would be
impossible to distinguish between a browser which did or did not support
ECMAScript, so the real issue is DOM support, not ECMAScript support.

There is no standardised basic DOM, it's all pretty much by agreement to
the early Netscapes "DOM level 0", perhaps you could say that was a
minimum requirement,  DOM Level 1, and DOM level 2, can't be, they include
things which make little sense in many output mediums, and would cause
programmers severe difficulties.  Then there's the simple fact that page
authors can't currently even author scripts that work today, let alone
work and are accessible.

> In my opinion that constitutes a reasonable baseline of support for
> 2001 web browsers.  Anything less than that is lagging behind spec
> by a great deal, and represents software in serious need of upgrade.

You've not explained which parts of DOM you feel are necessary - without
DOM2 (well in reality the IE extensions - style object and innerHTML.)
then ECMAScript/DOM does very little, either positive client-side
validation (only positive from a speed/reactivity basis) and the negative
of "browser sniffing".

Received on Thursday, 27 December 2001 20:50:20 GMT
