And it came to pass that Erik Harris wrote:
> On 30 Sep 2001 19:16:35 GMT, Christopher Jahn
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>Jay posts to a number of peer support forums. Only a
>>drooling idiot would expect him to memorize every single
>>post in every single group and have the ability to respond
>>to points raised in other threads.
>
> I don't expect that. I do expect that if Jay accuses me of
> ranting without posting examples, that Jay should first
> verify that I indeed did NOT post examples. I don't expect
> anyone to memorize everything, but I do expect people to at
> least make some really minor effort to verify an accusation
> before they put it in writing.
>
>>> Scrolldown menus don't work properly (i.e. the mouse goes
>>> anywhere NEAR them, and they scroll, making links
>>> underneath them impossible to access), as in:
>>> http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=kungfujoe
>
>>This page doesn't validate:
>>http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dvdaficion
>>ado.com%2Fdvds.html%3Fcat%3D1%26id%3Dkungfujoe&charset=%28det
>>ect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline If it were properly
>>coded, it would be more likely to work.
>
> That may be true, but the fact remains that it renders fine
> in Netscape 4 and IE. I'll point this out to the webmaster,
> but in the real world, whether or not something works with
> the established standard interfaces (that would be NS and
> IE) is more important than whether it strictly adheres to
> the specifications. In an ideal world, it would be
> otherwise, but in this world, it's more effective to write a
> program that is tolerant when the rules are bent, instead of
> crying foul.
YOu encourage sloppy work, and I don't. If web page designers
did their jobs properly, we wouldn't have this discussion.
Bad code is bad code, and there can be no valid argument in
support of it.
>
> BTW, the site you quote doesn't even attempt to validate
> this page, because it's missing the <!Doctype> tag that,
> required or not, web browsers apparently have no trouble
> ignoring them.
And yet this is so obviously not in keeping with the facts;
Mozilla did not render the page, and the page has this glaring
error.
> When I put that back in manually, the errors
> given in a validation attempt are mostly trivial things that
> browsers generally ignore without any trouble, like quotes
> in tags. So, while they are worth fixing (if the webmaster
> is responsive, hopefully they will be), they're most likely
> NOT causing this problem.. which brings us back to where we
> started - a deficiency in Mozilla's ability to interpret
> this JavaScript menu as well as the de facto standard
> browsers do..
They are not "standards compliant" browsers by any definition,
in that they do not adhere to the standards accepted in this
group, and by this project.
>
>>> I should add that when I talk about a program's overall
>>> stability, I don't JUST talk about how often it crashes
>>> and brings up Dr. Watson, but also how well or how poorly
>>> it does the things it's supposed to.
>
>>Then you are using the word incorrectly, and should expect
>>that people will misunderstand you. Stability should be
>>used specifically to describe how "stable" it is, that it,
>>how often does it crash or lock up.
>
> A structure doesn't have to fall over to be considered
> unstable. Unplanned amounts of wobbling are sufficient. :)
> As I see it, non-fatal errors (those include bugs, not just
> things that bring up error messages) are to wobbling as
> crashing is to collapsing.
>
The problems you've mentioned in this discussion don't reflect
"instability"; the program doesn't stop functioning, it simply
won't render bad code. While that may be a shortcoming, it has
nothing to do with stability; YOu can moce on to other pages,
open up menus, and so on. The program hasn't crashed or hung,
therefore it is stable.
Perhaps you can define "wobbling" more clearly. But I doubt it.
> Anyhow, when I look back at my original message, I see that
> I was specific enough to remain within your rigorous
> linguistic confines, whatever my thought process may have
> been, which makes your scolding kinda irrelevant.
>:-)
>
You must be using different rules of English, then. Because
your descriptions of your problems do not fall within the realm
of stability.
--
}:-) Christopher Jahn
{:-( Dionysian Reveler
My life and my homework are finite
To reply: xjahnATyahooDOTcom
