Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: The nonsense of removing IE

Author:Nick Sweeney
Posted:4/30/2000; 11:50:09 AM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 4/29/2000
Msg #:16799 (In response to 16782)
Prev/Next:16798 / 16800

What is missing from browsers that is such a problem???

Consistency.

It's a vicious circle. The way to get standards implemented is to use them. But clients -- the people who keep most web developers fed and clothed and housed -- want something that isn't going to break just because someone's using Netscape 3.0 on a Mac: look at Yahoo's HTML, for instance, for an example of something which renders passably in Netscape 1.1. And this means that leading-edge stuff very rarely goes public unless it's a proof-of-concept development, such as HalfBrain's DHTML spreadsheet.

Until we have some consistency in the browser domain, the good stuff will remain on intranets and internal sites, where you can exert some control over users' choice of software. But MS's recent decision to replace adherence to standards in IE5.5 with customisible toolbars doesn't inspire confidence. If browsers are just containers, as you say, they're bloody leaky ones.

It'd be nice if something could go into the DOJ settlement which would force Microsoft only to incorporate browsers which supported a pre-determined set of standards (CSS2, the DOM, etc). But that's something that I very much doubt to be possible...

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