Chris has a nice, toughtful response to my blog post that didn’t fit in my 3000 character limit (note: my limit is going up once I switch over to the new version of my CMS!). I generally agree with most of what Chris has to say, and I think he may have misunderstand some of my thoughts: I am in no way suggesting we abandon the existing standards. Rather, I’m suggesting that browser makers should be encouraged to innovate, using the unobtrusive -renderingengine syntax, alongside the existing standards.
http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/12/16/wither-web-standards-and-a-call-for-new-browser-wars/
001 // Chris Messina // 12.17.2007 // 1:22 PM
Fair enough. I do think there are problems with the -renderingengine and similar x-header approach in various systems, since they eventually become the de facto standards themselves if they don’t have a time-limit imposed on them… for example, it seems like it’d be wise to say, “If, within 365 days, this feature, designated by -renderingengine-featurename, has not been adopted by the appropriate standards body, the feature will be removed from the browser and will no longer be supported.”
Having such time-outs would, I would hope, get the community active to get their favorite features supported, rather than relying, long term, on rendering engine-specific features.