[thelist] Should browsers fix bad code? (was: What is wrong with this site?)

Kelly Hallman khallman at wrack.org
Mon Aug 18 19:50:30 CDT 2003


I'd prefer to control this behavior in IE; like a 'strict rendering mode'.  
Alas, all Microsoft ware is permanently in dummy mode. I've found when
Microsoft tries to think for a person, they usually get it wrong.

However, nothing is worse than a blank page. The first blank page that
comes up in a browser I'm testing, I know it will never be a contender.  
There is just too much bad HTML out there. If you've got to load IE to see
one page, you might as well use it for every page. (I'm not suggesting
doing that, I just figure that's the basic mentality, and MS knows that.)

If IE wasn't able to render insanely broken HTML, how would any Microsoft
product be able to have an HTML output feature? They'd have to then write
good code themselves, which would mean that it would also work on other
browsers of the day -- then there's less incentive to move everyone in the
whole company to a Windows platform because 'it works better' ... .....

Another thing: what about situations where you really don't have control
over whether the code is well formed or not, such as a CMS that allows the
administrative user to input HTML into sections of a (debugged) template?  
Better to have it render broken than to not render at all. Simply
previewing such changes would make the back button the only recourse.  

-- 
Kelly Hallman
http://wrack.org/



More information about the thelist mailing list