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."

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?

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.

Standards?

[sabNetwork]

I don't mean to troll, but who cares about standards when Microsoft doesn't care about standards? We can't push standards on WinIE.

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: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.