W3C Approves DOM Level 2

techsoldaten writes "Web developers rejoice! W3C announced yesterday the DOM Level 2 specification has become a full recommendation. Article about it on Infoworld. The payoff for Web developers, once this recommendation has been incorporated into browsers, is cross-browser DOM scripting should become a thing of the past and XHTML will be available as a means of handling some data-related tasks within a Web page. One hole in the silver lining: the specification is not backwards compatible with DOM Level 1."

Comments

DOM 2 *is* backwards compatible.

[CMU_Nort]

From the article:
"This means that developers who build applications using DOM Level 2 won't be building products compatible with current DOM browser technology. This could be a problem," he said.

It's backwards compatible, but not *downwards* compatible. Just like Windows 2000 can run old DOS programs, but you can't run Win2K programs on DOS.

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater

[ttfkam]

The validators just check that you use the spec, not that you're using the spec correctly.

For example:

while(hasmore = 1){
do_stuff();
has_more = 0;
}

Technically correct and it compiles, but it doesn't do what you would necessarily want it to do. Testing against IE is most definitely not testing against a W3C standard for rendering. IE has its share of bugs too -- sometimes bugs that only show up when viewed in another possibly more standards-compliant browser.

And why dump XHTML (I'm assuming "strict") for HTML 4.01 transitional? They are basically the same thing only XHTML transitional is well-formed XML. Since you already went through the trouble of making the site well-formed, why dump it for HTML? That's like saving up money for a BMW, not ending up with enough money, and choosing a used Ford Pinto. What about the middle ground?