Personally I favour having one content stream, but possibly multiple style/display streams. These could be assigned via server controls, or by careful creation of designs or by user action.
I certainly do not favour many of the still widely used code forks and detections around, but there are ways to work around deficiencies of some older (and newer) platforms without shutting some things off from one or more users.
Personally I'm looking forward to the day when I can serve the content in xml, and then style it with css, or svg or flash, (or whatever) depending on the user preference. And this would only be possible if everything understands the rules that everything else works under... standardsy stuff
scottbp
Ben Boyle wrote:
I would have thought the best way to target a browser (be it IE5 or other) was content negotiation. Detect the browser and serve content in the appropriate format. Does anyone else get the feeling this technique is rarely used whilst cruder methods proliferate?
IMHO, web servers can do a lot more than just serve files and should be exploited for all they are worth - and that's plenty. I feel this cornerstone of the web is oft overlooked, much to the detriment of the online experience when cruder technologies are called on to compensate.
Maybe it's just too difficult for developers to get access to webserver configuration, or too tedious to produce content in multiple formats? Gotta weight that against the time and effort we've all invested in workarounds and hacks though ... The right tool for the job. One can't solve every problem with a hammer.
cheers Ben
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