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

Cross-browser scripting

[CMU_Nort]

cross-browser DOM scripting should become a thing of the past

Umm, isn't cross-browser DOM scripting what we *want* in the future?

Re:Cross-browser scripting

[techsoldaten]

Depends on what you mean. With a single, unified DOM, there is no need to script for several browsers. Therefore, one would be writing code for the DOM, not a browser.

On the other hand, you really end up with an extra browser for a while, since DOM 2 is not backwards compatible.

M

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.

Wimps!

[Anonymous Coward]

Level 2? Man, I've gotten all the way to the top level of DOOM! The W3C must really suck at first-person shooters or something.

Incorporation into Browsers

[cbv]

The payoff for Web developers, once this recommendation has been incorporated into browsers [...]

... which will be like, uhm, dunno, never?

There's not even ONE browser available TODAY, that FULLY implements HTML4 or CSS2 - regardless that their respective developers say otherwise.

Re:Incorporation into Browsers

[ttfkam]

And there are quite a few Unix variants that don't have 100% support for POSIX either. This doesn't mean that a working subset isn't widely available and in common use.

Same thing goes for DOM2. Does any browser support all of that spec? No. Do Opera, Mozilla, IE, Konqueror, etc. support most of the common DOM 2 idioms? Yes.

With regard to CSS 2 support, yes, there is a great variability in support. But every browser in common desktop use supports

position: absolute;

and that's in the CSS 2 spec. I use that all of the time. 100% support is nice, but lacking that, 75% will work in a pinch. 75% isn't great, but it's a damn sight better than 0% standards support.

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?

Re:Throwing the baby out with the bathwater

[Tumbleweed]

Sorry, I misstated my problems. They're with CSS, not with XHTML. But if you go with strict XHTML, you really shouldn't be doing placement with tables, etc., as is common with HTML-based sites.

I can make an HTML 4 site using tables for placement that works well (pixel-pefect in most cases) with the vast majority of browsers, more quickly, and with less code, than I can with XHTML/CSS, because you have to specify so many different things via CSS, it takes up a lot of code.

Yes, it makes it harder to update, but most sites don't get updated all that much, anyway. And I can make sites that are fairly easy to update with regular HTML, anyway. Making a clearly-commented HTML template that my customers can then edit later on is a LOT easier than the equivalent with XHTML/CSS. This stuff is just way too complicated, now, and defeats one of the great things about HTML, that it was _easy_.

that's great

[Kanasta]

instead of having one case for each browser that exists, we first have to check which version were using and then have one case for each browser that exists

it's no longer about waiting for everybody to support the standard, now it's about waiting for everybody to drop support for the old standard, which takes much longer