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Posted by Ben C on 07/19/07 21:06
On 2007-07-19, Neredbojias <monstersquasher@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Thu, 19 Jul 2007 16:57:23 GMT
> Ben C scribed:
>
>> If there was only one browser but that had a clear published
>> specification that it implemented correctly that wouldn't be so bad. But
>> with only one browser around there's much less pressure on its vendor
>> either to publish such a specification or to stick to it. So web
>> development becomes a frustrating trial-and-error process of throwing
>> mud at the wall.
>
> I think it still is much that way today, and for that I blame the w3c and
> all their "optional" guidelines.
Well, they're trying to steer a path between specifying what browsers
already do and trying to make some sense of it in order to guide the
evolution of the web without trying to change it overnight.
I think it's working. Most major sites seem to get revamped about every
6 months to 2 years, and in the last year or two, many more of them have
started working in Firefox as well as in IE. And the reason is not
Firefox's quirks mode (which is fortunately fairly cursory): if a page
works in Firefox it's quite likely to work OK in any theoretical browser
that implements the specs correctly and also to work OK in Opera and
Konqueror/Safari.
But the specs, although mostly not ambiguous, are rather complicated and
difficult to understand with the result that the browsers don't all get
them right and a lot of web developers don't really understand them
either so go back to doing what they're good at, which is throwing mud
at the wall.
Except for the smart ones of course who read alt.html where everything
is explained with absolute clarity.
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