Posted by Ben C on 10/09/07 10:18

On 2007-10-09, Neredbojias <monstersquasher@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Mon, 08 Oct 2007 21:11:15
> GMT SpaceGirl scribed:
[...]
>> Proprietary is not always bad though. Look at the mess of the browser
>> market - not ONE browser meets the specifications the browser
>> manufactures agreed. Even worse than that, each implements most of the
>> standards slightly differently. Flash works the same everywhere, on
>> almost all platforms. If only Open software could even come close to
>> that. This is the problem though: There are a lot of very smart geeks
>> in the world and they all have their own arrogant belief that their
>> way is best, without actually thinking about Users. This is another
>> reason why so much OS software is horrible to look at. Created by
>> programmers, who can only think like programmers.
>>
>> Average folks aren't programmers - or designers for that matter.
>
[...]
> Despite its nostaglic exigency, html/css does seem very much like a
> dead end in the future - especially with the browser-barons' lack of
> concordance.

No, this is nonsense, and SpaceGirl's interpretation of history is also
a bit suspect.

The reasons for the differences between browsers are not open standards,
but the fact that the situation is still recovering from a nasty period
of browser wars between makers of proprietary software.

It's got nothing to do with geeks not understanding Users either. The
W3C standards and specifications are a compromise between trying to
explain what browsers already do and steering them towards a common
direction. They are doing a good job.

There are two main reasons for differences between browsers now: some of
them just haven't done all the work yet to meet the specs; and the specs
are so complicated (mostly because of all the historical baggage) that
in places they aren't always that easy to follow. But this improves with
every new draft as things get pointed out and clarified.

I doubt anyone is arrogantly _deliberately_ not following the standards,
although I suspect Microsoft may be being deliberately a bit reluctant
about catching up.

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