[thelist] RE: The need for IE-only sites?

Ken Schaefer ken at adOpenStatic.com
Wed Jul 7 21:46:17 CDT 2004


I think there may be two different, inter-related issues here:

a) using proprietary code that adheres to a proprietary (not-open) standard
    -and-
b) completely shoddy code

I think what you're seeing below (especially in "c" below) is an example of
shoddy code. Or maybe it would be better to describe it as: outright cr*p

I think we need to draw some kind of distinction between plain /bad/ code,
and code that is good, but utilises proprietary extensions to open
standards.

Now, I'm all for adhering to open (W3C) standards (though I'm less convinced
that everything needs to be 100% semantically correct, because of the
corporate nature of the work I do means that this is harder to justify at
the moment). Additionally, I see no problem using other technologies, as
required, when there is a good business case to do so (Flash, IE web
controls, etc).

The above, however, doesn't justify (in my mind anyway), lazy or shoddy
programming (for example, nesting one document inside another, like the
example you cited below). That type of crappy code has no place anywhere -
but is unrelated to the typical "standards" argument that's usually being
debated here.

Cheers
Ken


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Diane Soini" <dianesoini at earthlink.net>
To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 12:26 PM
Subject: [thelist] RE: The need for IE-only sites?


: I find this thread (The need for IE-only sites?) interesting if only
: because I'm having a bummer day, feeling that the attitude really is
: "standards? who cares?" Why:
: 1. My job. Standards, who cares. That's the attitude. So what it only
: works in IE. We don't care. Bloated code? Who cares. It's pretty and
: looks the same in Netscape 4 and that's all that matters. (yeah,
: conflicting, but both attitudes prevail.)
: 2. I'm looking for a new job. Same attitude: Standards? Who cares? We
: already tested the site and found it downloads quick enough. Bandwidth
: is not an issue. It looks pretty. Standards are not important.
: 3. Intralearn. The company just bought it and I cannot believe the lack
: of QA that went in to the front end development. One page I counted
: something like 7 iterations of the title tag and the meta content type
: tag. What kind of shoddy back end programming created that devil's
: spawn? Another page had two complete html documents--doctypes, html,
: head, body tags and everthing, one nested within another. Did anybody
: care that the product produces such crappy front end code? Does the
: front end code reflect at all on the back end code? Meanwhile, do you
: have an idea how difficult it is to customize the look and feel of a
: site with such crappy code? You can't predict at all how your css will
: behave. Ooh I'm so excited! I can customize the look and feel! Or can
: I? And joy of joys! I get to face a future of endlessly applying font
: tags and bloated nested tables, spacer images, frames and out-right
: invalid code forever, cheerfully looking the other way.
:
: C'mon guys. Let's get really truly honest about this. Does it really
: matter? I mean REALLY? Do web standards actually, really truly matter?
: I want to believe. I believe they should matter. I've even got
: Zeldman's book right here. I'm a believer. But DO standards ACTUALLY
: matter? Maybe they really don't. In the real world, when we look up
: from our favorite web logs and turn away from our rarified, ivory tower
: web worker world, there's nearly no valid, standards-compliant code out
: there and nobody cares.
:
: But, if standards actually do matter, how on earth do I find that job?
: Where is it?
:
: OK. I'm really gonna send this.
: Diane



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