On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Niall Kavanagh wrote:
> What gets me about Moz/Netscape is the lack of backwards compatibility
> with all the non-compliant DOM crap Netscape has in it's current crop of
> release browsers.
From what I understand, the Mozilla team discovered a few things when they
were building Navigator V5 (yes, five). The first was that the entire current
Navigator codebase (which is a direct linear descendant of NCSA Mosaic) was
completely unworkable and would have to be scrapped. Hence, this release is
Navigator V6. The second was that, frankly, the Netscape DOM was a
non-standard mess, and implementing it all over again would (1) be a waste of
time and (2) actually be counter-productive, because it is totally
non-standard.
> I'm all for doing things properly (which they have), but without
> addressing layers and all the other awful things they introduced to web
> developers, they're breaking a LOT of web pages.
So will IPv6. So will lots of other things. Life is hard. :-)
> Not only do the Netscape specific pages often bomb out, but the "cross
> platform" ones do to. Now I'll be developing for THREE major sets of
> browsers instead of two. yuk.
Yuk is right.
<RANT LEVEL=MILD>
Don't develop for web browsers. Develop for the W3C specifications. If you
make the mistake of tying yourself to a specific browser, then you should
expect to get bitten when things change. Microsoft has taught us this lesson
again and again: When you lock yourself into a proprietary solution, you will
be forced to start over repeatedly.
I have no sympathy for people who follow proprietary "standards" and then
complain when they turn out to be proprietary.
</RANT>
--
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Net Technologies, Inc. <http://www.ntisys.com>
Voice: (800)905-3049 x18 Fax: (978)499-7839
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