[thelist] the RIGHT way to build a browser.

[James Aylard]

Ryan,

> Good, except that they threw away their existing code!  Their "quirks"
mode
> now has quirks of it's own.  They should have kept the code from Netscape
4
> and made that the compatibility mode.

    From what I understand, the code of Netscape 4 was such a tangled mess
they had little choice but to start from scratch. And the Mozilla developers
would argue that "quirks" mode is designed to visually render most HTML
content as Netscape 4 would have (sort of).
    But if you mean that "quirks" mode should have maintained all of the
proprietary stuff from Netscape 4 (meaning, primarily, the <layer> element
and DOM compatibility), I think that's a fair point and one can make a
reasonable argument for it. By tossing out much of the proprietary stuff,
they made Netscape 6 a less-attractive platform for some developers.
    If you mean that even the "quirks" mode in Netscape 6 is buggy, I'd have
to agree with you. We're still dealing with an early-beta-quality piece of
software, IMHO.

James Aylard