In light of the recent backlash against Safari’s HTML extensions, Dave Hyatt has come up with what he considers to be a reasonable solution that addresses most of the concerns and potential solutions raised by many such as Eric Meyer, and Tim Bray.

However, his solution involves extending HTML by adding an xmlns attribute, which is supposed to only be used in real XML, such as XHTML.

Seriously, what is the point of adding it to HTML? Why not just do it correctly with XHTML? I’ve heard the arguments that it’s not as easy to learn, and authors are already familiar with HTML 4.01, but I disagree.

Safari supports XHTML, and since these extensions are aimed at being used in Apple’s new Dashboard, there is no reason to follow the WHAT WG decision to be bugwards-compatible with IE, and thus extend HTML, especially when these additions are presentational, as I discussed earlier, and commented on again in Eric Meyer’s latest post on the topic.

Although Dave Hyatt does mention:

…the benefit comes when you switch to real XML. In the XML implementation, the namespace is completely real and effectively maps to a new language…

I think the Safari team should just go all the way, and implement these extensions purely as an XHTML module. Although, I would prefer that the presentational additions, such as the new composite attribute for the <img/> element were actually done as proprietary extensions to CSS. eg. -safari-composite: source-over;.

In conclusion, this is a quick fix to address recent concerns, which just isn’t quite good enough. It’s a pseudo-solution that’s come out of almost complete laziness to do things correctly!

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!