Talk:Quirks mode

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[edit] .txt

Mention firefox uses qirks mode for .txt files too... --Jidanni 2006-04-16

[edit] Quirks mode as "legacy"

Pages which render as intended only because of quirks-mode behavior are indeed "legacy" pages; they are designed and created using techniques and practices which are outdated, deprecated, and actively discouraged by the relevant standards body, and continue to function only because of complex backwards-compatibility features implemented in major browsers. Something which functions according to outdated or deprecated behavior and is supported only through explicit backwards-compatibility features is, by definition, "legacy". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ubernostrum (talk • contribs) .

No, that's not the definition of legacy. See Wiktionary or reference.com. The term is being mis-used! People can create pages that don't use "standards" mode today. In fact, people do this all time, perhaps far more often than you realise. New things which are created now absolutely can not be defined as "legacy". More importantly, note that none of the external links used for this article use the word legacy anywhere; this is simple editorialization on the part of Wikipedia, and it has no place here. Warrens 01:49, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes it is. Quoth your Wiktionary link: "(computing) of a computer system that has been in service for many years and that a business still relies upon, even though it is becoming expensive to maintain". Pages which are built for quirks mode rely on (check) syntax and behaviors which have existed for many years (check), even though it is becoming expensive (to browser developers) to maintain (check). Seems to fit. As for references, if you'd really like me to I can happily cite Mozilla and Opera calling this "legacy behavior". I will be re-inserting the term and adding those links, and if you feel that it is still inappropriate despite my arguments, please feel free to begin any of Wikipedia's formal dispute processes regarding its use in this article.

One more while I'm at it: noted CSS expert Eric Meyer uses the terms "legacy bugs", "legacy layout" and "legacy authoring" while talking about quirks mode: http://www.ericmeyeroncss.com/bonus/render-mode.html —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ubernostrum (talk • contribs) .

Great, so now we're citing sources with a clear point of view on the subject (pro-web-standards) as authoritative? Just what Wikipedia needs more of, POV-pushing. Nothing you've said addressed the key point of the fact that new pages are being created using quirks mode. Yes, there are plenty of older documents which certainly qualify as "legacy" as they were created long before the modern standards became widely used. That, however, only tells part of the story: Newly-created pages aren't automatically "legacy" by virtue of leaving out a single statement at the beginning of the page, but they do render in quirks mode. Don't believe me? Go look at a Myspace profile, CNN.com, or BBC World News, all of which render in quirks mode. Nobody in their right mind would argue that these are "legacy" pages; they're some of the most-visited pages on the Internet!

This article describes the existence of one of the two valid methods by which a page can be rendered. Is that clear? It's VALID. I know this is an extremely difficult concept for standards afficionados to accept, especially since their stance is a POV propogated by well-spoken people like Eric Meyer, and they expect others to accept this as The Truth. It is, of course, in their own selfish self-interest to push their preferred web standards and to refer to the other option as "legacy".

Wikipedia's overriding philosophy is still one of neutrality, however, and every topic, including this one, must be presented as such. To this end, I've re-written the overview to balance out the issue of "legacy" pages vs. "new" pages which both use quirks mode rendering. Please, instead of simply reverting these changes to try and push the Eric Meyer-approved view of things, support a consensus-building approach to getting all the correct and relevant information into this article. That's what we're here at Wikipedia to do.

p.s. don't forget to sign your talk page comments with four tildes. Warrens 07:35, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Regarding your points:

• Web standards as a "point of view": HTML and CSS are open specifications, maintained by a a vendor-neutral international standards body with the widespread consensus of major players in the industry. This is roughly as POV as would be referencing building codes in articles about structural engineering. You seem to have a personal grudge of some sort regarding this issue, however, and I'd appreciate it if you could set that aside while discussing this article.
• Regarding the authority of the link to Mr. Meyer's comments: regardless of your personal feelings, Eric Meyer is a noted expert on the subject of CSS, and the link to his work was not inserted into the article; I mentioned it here on the talk page, and only here on the talk page, as further support for the use of the term "legacy".
• On the use of "legacy": you claim that it "propagates" a so-called "Eric Meyer point of view". However, the two links I actually added to the article are both from browser vendors: one from the Mozilla Foundation and one from Opera Software. They both characterize quirks mode behaviors using the term "legacy", hence the term "legacy" is appropriate. And again, pages which rely on quirks mode are relying on outdated and, often, non-standards-compliant behavior and impose a significant compatibility burden on developers of web browsing software. This is, as I've reiterated, pretty much the definition of "legacy" in computing. The fact that pages continue to be created using these techniques does not make the techniques any less outdated, does not make the features they rely upon any less non-standard, and does not change the burden they create on browser developers.

I'm going to re-insert the "legacy" terminology; if you still feel that this is a serious issue which affects the quality or accuracy of the article, please say so here and we can go through the appropriate channels to resolve it. Ubernostrum 08:33, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I've edited the article a bit to ensure that it only references documentation from browser vendors in describing quirks mode vs. standards mode behaviors. I also made a minor edit to the "legacy pages" section to try to make its language more accurate and involve less insinuation about developers not following standards. Please let me know what you think. Ubernostrum 09:02, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

You're completely ignoring the thrust of what I'm saying, and you've reverted every change I've made to the article -- in spite of a request to not do so -- in favour of prose you've written yourself. What do you expect me to think, other than that you don't want to work collaboratively on this, and that you're here to push a specific POV?

The phrase "legacy pages" didn't appear in the article before you rewrote pretty much the entire article and added that characterization in. Where are you getting this phrase from? Eric Meyer doesn't talk about legacy pages -- he talks about legacy browser behaviour. Microsoft doesn't use the term "legacy pages" -- they talk about "previous versions". Mozilla doesn't use the term "legacy pages" -- they talk about legacy browsers. Opera doesn't use the term "legacy pages" -- they talk about legacy browsers, too. Who is talking about "legacy pages", other than you? It's not in any of your references.

Don't you see the issue here? The problem isn't described by anybody noteworthy as being "legacy pages". Again I point to CNN, BBC World News, and other major web sites which render in quirks mode as notable samples of web sites which are most certainly not "legacy pages", yet are subject to the issue described in this article!

I'm going to edit the article, once again, to remove this characterization, because it's not accurate, and is not described as such by any of the article's references. This is in accordance with WP:Verifiability and WP:No original research. I'm also going to reinstate the Quirksmode.org link, which has been in this article since day one, and is considered a fairly authoritative page on the subject. You've removed it for no particularily good or justifiable reason; it really should be here.

Once again, I request that you NOT SIMPLY REVERT my changes. And please, lay off with this "formal dispute process" hand-waving... they're not there to go running to every time someone makes an edit you don't like. If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly, do not submit it. Warrens 10:38, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

You should also review WP:External links to learn how to create them properly. Mediawiki will create numbers for you; you don't have to fudge it yourself. Warrens 10:43, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

The term "legacy" did not appear in the page until I edited it. However, the article was also marked as a stub and marked as in need of cleanup to "conform to a higher standard of quality". I had some free time and I was familiar with the subject, so I edited and expanded the article; I'd hope you'll agree with me that it's now more thorough and useful as a result.

And again, I cite the definition of the term "legacy" which you provided from Wiktionary: "(computing) of a computer system that has been in service for many years and that a business still relies upon, even though it is becoming expensive to maintain". The techniques used by quirks mode pages have been in service for many years. Check. Businesses still rely upon them. Check. It is increasingly expensive to maintain compatibility with them. Check. Opera and Mozilla do not directly refer to these pages as "legacy pages", but their documentation is not concerned with pages -- it is concerned with browser behavior. They refer to quirks mode as "legacy behavior"; logically, would a page which is not a "legacy page" be reliant upon "legacy behavior"? Bottom line: calling them "legacy pages", regardless of when they were created, is accurate, because they rely on expensive and difficult backwards-compatibility routines in browsers to render their outdated and/or deprecated code. At this point I'm unaware of how to more clearly articulate this fact. Ubernostrum 22:51, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

As to your edits being reverted out, I do apologize for that. I was using the most direct method available of getting back to the versions you had changed, which was simply to copy/paste and save. Besides, I figured I could rely upon you to be by shortly after to re-insert anything you felt needed to be placed back in the article.

For now I'm done with this; I've asked some knowledgeable people to help me find further citations which will support the use of the term "legacy", as apparently conforming to a definition of the term published at Wiktionary is insufficient grounds for being able to use it on Wikipedia. Hopefully that will be able to resolve this issue once and for all.

Here's a nice one: http://www.motive.co.nz/glossary/legacy-content.php. "Quirks mode enables legacy HTML documents to still ‘work’, and should be triggered when the underlying code is known to fail technical standards (and if there is no intention/budget to revise legacy content)."

And while I imagine Ian Hickson will be struck down as a "standards aficionado", he's been a developer for both Mozilla and for Opera, is a member of the WHAT-WG, and he consistently refers to quirks mode itself as "legacy mode". See, for example, this document: http://www.hixie.ch/specs/alttext-1.2 Ubernostrum 06:50, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

In further support for the use of the term "legacy" or legacy pages", I submit a quote from Devindra S. Chainani, the Group Program Manager for Expression Web Designer: "Prior to IE6, browsers built in non-standard rendering, without conforming to W3C recommendations With wider acceptance of standards, browsers began to operate in two modes – a ‘quirky’ mode called Quirks mode and a ‘standards’ mode. The former was used to support legacy pages." http://blogs.msdn.com/devi/archive/2005/10/14/481227.aspx Mcwilson 13:24, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft on the use of DOCTYPE to switch rendering modes: "DOCTYPE Switching was introduced to enable browsers to render both standards-compliant and legacy Web sites correctly." Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/aspnetusstan.asp

Warren, in your opinion is the use of the term still "not accurate"? Ubernostrum 14:44, 17 April 2006 (UTC)