[thelist] Re: news.com article on browsers and mainstream sites etc..

Tom Dell'Aringa pixelmech at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 9 10:49:01 CDT 2002


I remember during the boom when I was with Scient, that there was a
fair amount of talk about a "web professional" union, and that in
fact some folks at a couple places even tried firing it up.

The circumstances were different - it wasn't really for the reasons
Daniel mentioned, but I remember it falling flat on its face and some
of those people losing pretty lucrative jobs.

Anyway, my only two cents on the matter is that you'll never be able
to have us all "code the way we want to" and be-boggle the browsers.
Because ultimately, you are answering to bosses and clients who want
their products to work so they can make money, and as the article
stated - they often are mainly concerned with it working in IE.

I've experienced this constantly in my career, and in fact I today
work on a ASP app (thats Application Service Provider) that is IE
only, because to do all the hairy things that are done in the app
would take forever to support more than IE. (In fact, some of the
things we do are outright impossible in other browsers - not what was
said about 'proprietary technology'.)

So if all the developers stood up here and said 'hey, we're only
going to code "good" code now! So, there!' We'd all be looking for
new jobs ;)

An extremely challenging economic market is not the time to make such
stands - and as I said it failed in the best of times.

BUT - I think what we CAN do is make the code we DO write as good as
possible - try to make it validate, use XHTML if you can, try to make
it as accessible as possible within the guidelines you are given.
THEN, you evangelize your bosses to move toward standards and so on.
Its going to have to take an effort by all of us to get the ball
rolling, and I think this is exactly what the WaSP is saying, and I
agree.

My. 02

Tom
--- Tim Luoma <luomat at peak.org> wrote:
> Daniel Medley wrote:
>
> >Too bad web designers couldn't
> >just unify and say, "we're doing everything in a compliant manner.
> How the
> >browsers deal with it is not our concern." If business and
> individual users
> >want to have full use of the web and your work then they better
> get
> >compliant browsers. If not, tough.
> >
>
> Well that is certainly part of the problem, as the folks on WaSP
> discussed[1].... it's the web-writers of the world who have
> embraced
> these various hacks and proprietary extensions who hold at least
> part of
> the blame.  For a good long while there were few tools if any that
> supported standards, and neither of the main 2 browsers did.
>
> That's no longer the case, so we have to stop using them.
>
> The problem, as I see it, is that there will never, ever be a
> version of
> Internet Explorer that does not include some proprietary functions.
>  Why?  Because if it did then there would be no reason to use IE
> over
> another browser, and really, if your computer came with no browser
> at
> all and you had the choice between 2 browsers  -- one of which had
> a
> regular dose of security holes that could compromise your system
> (IE)
> and the other which didn't (say, Mozilla) which would you use?
>
> All things (wrt standards) being equal, browsers have to depend on
> either their UI (look and feel, stability, etc) or proprietary
> extensions, albeit plugins or HTML-muckery.
>
> Well I will grant that I haven't had IE crash on me in a long time
> (then
> again I only use it when I have to) but as far as UI goes, as far
> as the
> feel I get when I am using it, I'd rather use Opera (which, in
> fact, I do).
>
> Do you ever see a scenario where IE will be willing to play on a
> level
> field -- no proprietary hacks, and you have to download IE off
> their
> website (oh, and MSDN and windowsupdate.microsoft.com and all their
> other sites will be compliant too)?  HECK NO.  It will never
> happen.
>  IIRC, MS still requires that IE be on the desktop if anything is
> on the
> desktop.  They still require a link to MSN if any ISP link is on
> the
> desktop.  They are not going to risk one iota of their illegally
> gained
> market"share".
>
> Someone wrote to me not long ago saying that they didn't think it
> was
> proper for me to be so upset about MS and their tactics.  They
> asked me
> what Microsoft had ever done to me.  It's not what they've done to
> me,
> it's what they've done to everyone.  I don't hate them, I fear
> them,
> because they will take whatever they can get and if Gates has any
> abilities at all they are for crow-barring into a market and taking
> it
> over (see WordPerfect, see Netscape, see any of the other companies
> they've done it to....)  "Freedom to innovate".... yeah.... tell me
> what
> Microsoft has innovated that wasn't built on the work of others....
>
> Anyway, it's a nice idea (your quote above) but never going to
> happen.
>  All we can hope is that it gets better.
>
> TjL
>
>
> [1] http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53026,00.html
>
>
>
>
> --
> For unsubscribe and other options, including
> the Tip Harvester and archive of thelist go to:
> http://lists.evolt.org Workers of the Web, evolt !


=====
var me = tom.pixelmech.webDeveloper();
http://www.pixelmech.com/

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free
http://sbc.yahoo.com



More information about the thelist mailing list