[thelist] Netscape 6 loads page twice

Peter-Paul Koch gassinaumasis at hotmail.com
Thu Dec 7 09:41:33 CST 2000


> >> features that are not part of the W3C recommendation. Ever used a name
> >> attribute on an image to create a rollover? Boom, your page will not
> >> validate. The spec calls for ID attributes on images.

But the browsers (especially the older ones) call for NAMEs. This is partly 
a philosophical problem: if, by using NAMEs, you can get your script to work 
in NN3, I think you should use it, and Too Bad for the specs.

>The name attribute is on the way out.

No, this I don't believe. When HTML 4.0 was released, it didn't include NAME 
any more.  At that point in time it was quite silly to say so, because we 
still needed NAMEs to get mouseovers to work in Netscape 3 and 4, which 
still had a fair share of the market. Therefore the spec was widely ignored 
(I, among others,  always pushed for ignoring it).

In HTML 4.01, NAMEs were once again allowed.

Opera 4 didn't recognizes NAMEs in form fields any more, completely 
according to the spec. Result: common form validation scripts, that always 
work with NAMEs to accomodate older browsers, didn't work any more.

Opera 5 once again recognizes NAMEs.

It's partly a question of conservatism: web developers don't change their 
scripts if it isn't necessary (if browsers continue to support NAME), so 
browsers can't ignore NAMEs or else the scripts won't work any more.

So I don't think NAMEs are on the way out, they'll stay with us for a long 
time to come. And why not?

ppk
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