SPAM-LOW: Re: [thelist] Re: SPAM-LOW: Re: Common Practice vs Standards

Alan McCoy a.r.mccoy at larc.nasa.gov
Wed Jan 26 08:07:30 CST 2005


That blog entry was pretty eye-opening...Especially this line:

"We knew that if we couldn't render existing content on the internet our 
browser would immediately be rejected by our customers. So we coded an 
in built tolerance for bad HTML."

I can kinda see their initial logic in doing that, especially since 
we're talking about 1996 and the ratio of sites with bad code to sites 
with good code was probably higher back then. (okay, maybe not since 
there really wasn't much back then that you *could* code.) They 
basically built in a fail-safe mechanism not so much for bad code, but 
for bad coders.

I've seen time and time again where a site that was beautifully done 
with standards-compliant code was handed over to a client. Then when the 
site needs some updates -- some content changes, a new section added, 
etc. -- rather than go back to the developer to have it done right, the 
client will get the receptionistwhoknowsalotaboutcomputers to do 
it...usually with no thought about proper coding.

Also, you have the huge number of companies who use IE as their 
corporate standard browser, not because it's great, but because (1) it's 
already there...nothing else to install and (2) it integrates better 
with their MS-based server and application environment. With so many 
office applications now being browser-based, it kinda makes sense for MS 
to make sure IE can handle ANY kind of coding. (which it really doesn't 
but I'm not gonna beat a dead horse...)

But I will say that MS's failure to update those fail-safe measures to 
go along with present standards is somewhat inexcusable. I understand 
they can't rewrite IE's rendering engine everytime the W3C writes a new 
blog entry, but they should be able to easily fix some of IE's more 
lingering standards adherance problems.

I'm all for 100% standards-compliancy from all browsers...just don't 
expect the big boys to submit to our wishes anytime soon.

--
Alan McCoy
http://www.coingo.net/freemacmini - Get your FREE Mac mini!


>That will probably never happen. Too much will probably "break". End users
>are not the ones that make Microsoft money - corporations are, and they would
>not be happy if the apps that they have spent millions developing suddenly
>started developing strange quirks. Check Dave Masey's blog post about this
>here:
>http://blogs.msdn.com/dmassy/archive/2004/10/15/243115.aspx
>
>
>  
>


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