Exploring Safari’s HTML Tag-Soup Extensions

Like everyone one else, I thought the days of browser vendors adding proprietary extension to HTML was over. Sadly, I was wrong: Safari has decided to join in on the game. They’ve now introduced a <canvas> element as well as a new composite attribute for the <img> element. Not only are both of these presentational attributes, they’ve been added to HTML, while still using the HTML 4.01 doctypes.

Of course, Dave Hyatt attempted to explain with a follow up post the reasons for making these extension to HTML and not using XHTML and adding them with a different namespace. Also, as he points out, others suggested that they should have used SVG, yet fails to explain with any valid reason, except by saying that it would have basically been too difficult and time consuming. IMO, that’s just plain lazy, and I would have expected better from Apple. Sorry Dave, I have to agree with Eric Meyer on this one — this is big a mistake, and I think the Safari team should hang their heads in shame!