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

Re: The nonsense of removing IE

Author:Nick Sweeney
Posted:4/30/2000; 3:34:52 PM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 4/29/2000
Msg #:16831 (In response to 16825)
Prev/Next:16830 / 16832

But "incremental" movement towards standards just isn't good enough. As the people at webstandards.org say time and time again, you can't get developers on board unless they have confidence in the tools they're using. And when IE5.5/Windows backpedals on IE5/Mac with regard to a baseline standards spec, it destroys confidence and enthusiasm:

Putting up "most" of a fence does not protect your privacy. Putting up "most" of a firewall doesn't keep the crackers out...

When the market leader emphasizes colored scrollbars instead of commonalities, the Web gets fractured, users get hurt, Web developers stay up all night coding workarounds, and Web site operators get their wallets drained paying those developers. [We'll do without the money, honest - just give our night-time hours back!]

If the IE5.5/Windows team have enough slack time to fiddle with coloured scrollbars, then they have no excuse for not supporting CSS1 and HTML 4.0. And they certainly have no excuse for not feeding from the Mac development team.

But that is the list you ask for: HTML 4.0 and CSS1. The specs are at www.w3.org, and have been around for long enough. And it shouldn't be too much to ask of all browsers: it's the equivalent of asking a text-handling program to support ASCII, or networking software to handle TCP/IP. (And yes, I know how long that last one took Microsoft...)

We're at 5.0, which means it's time to stop thinking in terms of browser version numbers. This should be the stage where baseline standards dictate (and I mean that literally) the core functionality of the browser. Instead, fundamental inconsistencies continue to force developers into lowest common denominator HTML solutions -- or towards plugins like Flash which sacrifice basic usability to ensure "consistency" for commercial clients.

It's time to invert our expectations of the browser, and see the back of the approach which forces us to say things like "this site is optimised for IE5 with a few hacks to stop Netscape crashing."

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