On Sat, 9 Feb 2002, Stephane Bailliez wrote: > > - you can write a html page that displays in netscape2.0. People don't > > have to upgrade their pages every for every new browser. > > Don't exagerate, HTML is certainly not the example. > You'd better not put any presentation in your damn html page then or you > deserve to be shot. > HTML + CSS rules. HTML sucks.
HTML 'presentations' ( with CSS, flash, activeX, etc ) sucks indeed, and will not work problably on anything except IE ( latest ). You can write this kind of pages without problems, and force the users to upgrade or use your version of the browser. But my point was that a page with clean HTML that worked 10 years ago will still display corectly today ( I have few ), and you can ( still ) write clean HTML ( including with CSS ) that display on any browser, including Netscape2.0, WebTV, Mozilla, konqueror, opera or lynx. > For how many years do we have to support crappy pages where there is > everything but the correct data in it ? > I want a STRICT syntax, not a loose one where everything is permitted. I > would be curious to know what was the cost of having decided that start/end > tag of html/head/body is optional. Or what would have been the cost to decide that pages with optional start/end are going to triger an annoyng warning in Netscape2.1, and not work in Netscape3.0 ( and to force the HTML authors to upgrade all their pages every year, and the users to use the latest browser ) Standards are not perfect - I agree optional start/end are bad, and I'm sure you'll be able to find something that can be done differently in any of them ( from TCP/IP to XML ). But making incompatible changes to an accepted standard ( including a de-facto standard like the build.xml tags and attribute names ) is far more damaging than supporting the standard. Everyone is smart and could have done a better HTML. > Now you are simply unable to write a page that display correctly in any > browser because of the need for browsers to support every crap out there. > > That's the cost of legacy. I think you confuse things. You can't write a page full of crap that will work on any browser, but if you stick to the basic HTML - you certainly can. Test your page in lynx first - it's one of the best browsers ( one of the few that sends the mandatory charset ), and it'll work everywhere. Upgrade to the latest IE, use the 'cool' new features - and of course your page will be visible only in IE. That's the cost of 'featurism'. Costin -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
