[Javascript] Re: Standards - was Is this right Javascript?

Roger Roelofs rer at datacompusa.com
Thu Apr 10 03:53:05 CDT 2003


Andrew,

It certainly would make our job as web developers easier.  However, it 
would be very bad in the long run.  Without competition, innovations 
cease.  The web would cease to be accessible to all and over time 
html/xml would no longer be the preferred storage medium for the 
collected knowledge we all share.

The real key is to continue lobbying browser vendors for standards 
compliance.  That way, we and our users have browser choices, end the 
browser vendors have a reason to improve their products.  I understand 
that we are not 'typical' web users, but my my setup illustrates my 
point well.  I currently have 9 browsers installed on my machines:  5 
are proprietary, 2 are Mozilla based and 2 are KHTML based.  Each one 
has features that are unique and helpful to me in my life/work.  No one 
browser will ever do everything I want, unless I write it myself :=) ).

I guess the bottom line is that I prefer to code to standards because 
I'm philosophically geared to prefer user choice over my convenience.  
Having said that, browser support is a royal pain.  And I have to 
confess that most critical feature of the web apps I write have been 
pushed server-side because of the non-standard browser mess.

On Thursday, Apr 10, 2003, at 02:28 America/Detroit, "Andrew Gibson" 
<andyg at ihug.co.nz> wrote:

> It would be an enhancement if all the other non ie browsers went out of
> existence quite frankly. I'd guess that none have the same sort of
> sophistication as MSIE. Think of all the rich features on sites we're
> missing out on because we have to cater for all...and most coders 
> don't do
> that anyway, only the top 2 IE and NS. Not only that, I suspect the
> development of IE is hindered because they're not sure how supportive 
> coders
> are.
>
>> Anything which isn't in an international standards document and is 
>> proprietary to one vendor/development tree is "bastardized" to my way 
>> of thinking.



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