"Geoff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> This is the heart of the matter.

Yes, it is.

> I think that most of use here would accept that we are engaged in a
conflict with M$.

Concerning operating systems, there's Mac OS and Linux against M$'s Windows.
Concerning browsers, there's Mozila, Opera, and so on against the Internet
Explorer. Many use these alternatives not because they don't like the way
Internet Explorer is, but mainly because they "hate" M$. So yes, you might
call this a conflict. Maybe even a battle.

> Where we differ is as to tactics in this part of the battlefield.  From
the perspective of a linux user I feel that I have enough difficulties
weaning people away from
> Windows without needing to explain to them the importance of this battle
at the same time.  I am quite happy, as it were, to dress up as the enemy
> (if that is what being non-standard involves), if that is what is needed
at this time to give me the enormously powerful weapon of a browser that
> can, from a user's perspective, do anything IE can do.  I can appreciate
that your point of view may be different.

And I appreciate that people like you have another point of view. It's a
tough matter, and I think a similar thing was in mid-98, when Apple
introduced the "iMac". It had no floppy drive, no SCSI, no ADB, and so on -
before that, every Mac had it, and literally nobody wanted one to be without
it. With this radical movement, Apple could move quite a lot of people -
fortunately involving many hardware manufacturers too - to USB, which was
introduced by iMac as a replacement for ADB and low-speed SCSI devices. They
could have as well brought iMac _with_ these "legacy" interfaces, and
provided a note in the manual "Usage of floppy drives is no longer
recommended." - but people would have laughed at that and said "oh well, but
what if I still use it, hmm?".

Now, the "legacy interfaces" are things like Netscape 4's <layer> tag, and
the new replacement would be the standards compliant <div>. Mozilla does the
radical way just like Apple did back then, and so far isn't really that
successful. It'll take quite a lot of time. mozilla.org has a "Tech
Evangelism" team which talks with owners of huge sites like those you've
mentioned, and tries to convince them to make their sites more standards
compliant - and thus more compatible to Gecko-based browsers like Mozilla,
Netscape 6, K-Meleon, and so on.

Regards,
S�ren Kuklau



Reply via email to