Re: Handling of unknown attributes of a tag by a browser

Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>

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From: Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Message-id: <9307301146.AA00695@manuel.hpl.hp.com>
Subject: Re: Handling of unknown attributes of a tag by a browser
To: fwilliam@ccs.carleton.ca
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 93 12:46:30 BST
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Mailer: Elm [revision: 66.36.1.1]
Status: RO

Fred Williams raises the question of what browsers should do with
unknown attributes:

> Is it intended to:
>          1)        just ignore the illegal attribute and process the
>                    tag otherwise,
>          2)        or, ignore the tag and associated text to the end
>                    tag,
>          3)        or some variation on the above.
>
> For example, in HTML+, the following tag <p classifier="XXX"> I would
> think should still generate a paragraph break even if the attribute
> 'classifier' is not understood by the browser.  The same would be for
> <h2 classifier="YYY">

I believe that unknown attributes should be ignored, in the same way
that elements with unknown tags are currently ignored, i.e. option (1).

Thanks for raising this point, I will make sure it gets into the next
revision to the HTML+ spec.

Many thanks,

Dave Raggett