Steve wrote:
> I've done web pages professionally, as well as
>personally, and I've never had any complaints that my
>pages (which of course all contained the required DTD)
>didn't work with one type of browser or other.
'of course', 'required'... hmmmm.
Nevertheless, it's good to hear of a professional
webpage "do-er" without complaints.
> I even used to check my pages with either IE 3.x
>or 4.x (whichever I might have had access to) and
>never saw any problem myself.
'even' -- if it wasn't too recently there was still
a large user-base and in any case IE3 is some kind of
baseline. NN2 is a step too far, for me (sorry Clarence).
Then there are the problems with IE on the Mac.
> I've read of problems with IE rendering certain W3C
>compliant pages, but just having the DTD isn't one
>I've ever heard of.
Specific instance was to do with CSS. Problem solved
by removing the DTD. Sorry, I can't remember the location
of the article.
>> W3C standards vs. the rich tapestry (or poisoned
>> mire) of the real Net.
>
> Since M$ has a seat on the W3C, and since the
>standards are designed for the "real net," I don't
>see any conflict.
I suppose not. The real Net is over-populated by users
of Win9x+ so nobody else counts? The majority are told
they should be happy. Then along comes an attack from
Ruritanians armed with flowerpots...
Real webpages are scattered with extensions like <nobr>
and kludges for v3 browsers that might validate as
HTML 4.01 Transitional but not as HTML 3.2 The older
browsers couldn't care less about the lack of a DTD and
nor, yet, do the latest offerings. I've got code from
outside sources for e.g. hit-counters and content-rating
that won't validate under any DTD.
Personally, I'm stuck in a time-warp where I want pages
to be OK on v3 browsers with 640x480 256-color screens.
Those restrictions can cause enough hassle so I trust
in the more capable browsers being able to look after
themselves. New users in the UK are using a NetTV with
a browser identified as NN3 -- no CSS, so for static pages
I use HTML 4.01 Transitional with CSS for not much more
than justifying text and adding hover.
P.noCSS {display: none} is useful for when I use more CSS
and offer a link (or excuse) for users of less capable
browsers. My alternative pages are very basic (no tables
for layout or specified colors); the kind of non-design
I gravitate to, given the chance e.g.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/default.stm
Focusing on one aspect of the M$ involvement: the
widespread use of the Verdana font. This font is big
and IE's CSS implementation discouraged the use of
relative font sizing. Couple that with those thinking
it was acceptable to use <font face="verdana" size="1">
for body text and you get squinty pages for anyone
without Verdana.
Quoting from HTML: The Definitive Guide (Musciano & Kennedy,
O'Reilly & Associates, revised 1998) pp.46-47:
"It's also unclear what doctype to use when including in
the HTML document the various tags that are not standards,
but are very popular features of a popular browser -- the
Netscape extensions, for instance, or even the deprecated
HTML 3.0 standard, for which a DTD was never released.
Almost no one precedes their HTML documents with the SGML
doctype command. Because of the confusion of versions and
standards, we don't recommend that you include the prefix
with your HTML documents either." EOQ
Things have certainly changed but, like I said, I'm stuck
in a time-warp. I would love to use and write for a standards
compliant user agent for the OSen I'm somewhat comfortable
with, but I don't know of one.
"Imperfection hath its charms", however.
Regards,
Jake
Thanks for IPW, BTW.
