<<"Thomas Mueller": Standard HTML, and the upcoming XML, ought to be good
enough. >>
I just had a little deja vu from the tagline you see in email
from Bill Gates '640 K ought to be enough for anyone' <g> when
I saw that (I've got to get outdoors more)
The W3C standard for HTML includes both scripting and CSS :)
Michael added some functionallity from HTML 4 when it first came
out (cool), but in Internet time 18 months is a lot and the
'average' consumer (that someone mentioned earlier) is one with a
browser that has those features [sigh] :) if you go by the number
of PCs sold in a day/week/month/year I would suppose.
The QNX browser is HTML 3.2, but does support javascript which
is used by some websites to get features that HTML alone lacks.
Hmmm, seeing Arachne have XML/XSL/XSLT capabilities would be
verrry, interesting, [right after Usenet news ;) and secure protocol
support]. Arachne is a great tool, but it's not competitive
with the browsers and web sites aimed at buying/selling online.
At the recent Internet World show in Los Angeles the thing has
changed in just 3 years from a room full of low key deal making
around coffee islands and internet cafes into a big business
show where there was beer and martinis available in a number
of booths but we had trouble finding even one that had coffee.
(Lots of folks want to be an IPO or work for the next company
that will give them the next stock options - I suppose if I was
younger, that would be something I'd be looking for as well).
An issue I get from clients is that if you keep the site 'simple'
how many customers (and they want customers to buy from them) will
think the site is not 'hot' and go somewhere else. (sigh), so
there's different viewpoints for different people.
The costs in time/labor and testing of websites with a lot of
browsers can be a big one (and that's not going to get less complicated
anytime soon <g>). In the websites on CompuServe forums they're
supposed to be able to support level 3 browsers and up, and that
means javascript (mostly in the background navigation parts we
don't control) and testing on a mac, DOS, windows, OS2 etc can
drive you a bit nuts when you think you've just found a site that
works in all of them and still looks 'new' you find that one little
thing that turns out to be hours of fixing.
One thing that Javascript helps with is being able to present
some of the page content based on the timezone and browser the
person is using. which can be helpful.
Michael mentioned he was going to add it, and perhaps it will
be available soon. You can turn it off in the big-brand browsers
so I suspect that would be the case in Arachne as well.
Micheal's how he would do the language today is a sensible one,
but as he mentioned, sort of stuck with the hand that's dealt
when implementing against the W3C and common usage stuff :)
Bob Buckland ?:-)
