I'm not sure if it's a good idea to link to an article without even 
having read it all myself. But I skimmed through it and looks like it's 
a *great* one.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html

(REALLY long, you have been warned)

"You're about to see the mother of all flamewars on internet groups 
where web developers hang out. The IE 8 team is in the process of making 
a decision that lies perfectly, exactly, precisely on the fault line 
smack in the middle of two different ways of looking at the world. It's 
the difference between conservatives and liberals, it's the difference 
between "idealists" and "realists," [...] And there's no solution. But 
it will be really, really entertaining to watch, because 99% of the 
participants in the flame wars are not going to understand what they're 
talking about."

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"Nicolas Alvarez" <nic### [at] gmailisthebestcom> wrote in message
news:47e1b2b4$1@news.povray.org...
> I'm not sure if it's a good idea to link to an article without even
> having read it all myself. But I skimmed through it and looks like it's
> a *great* one.

I read it yesterday. It is good.

It's going to be interesting to see how this pans out.

From an academic point, the perfect adherence to standards would be a good
thing. However it they do that, so few people will use it that it will be a
total waste of time and money.

Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don't

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I've read it before.  Very interesting read although not one of his brightest
articles.  One correction I'd make is that in the graphs, Joel makes it
implicit that Microsoft is the equivalent of the original salesman in Mars and
IE the original plug:  Netscape was the one and the original plug being
Navigator, now turned Mozilla.

He also asks:  "what is a web standard?"  I'd say it's whatever that bunch of
enterprises comprising the W3C -- including Microsoft -- do come up with in
order to advance and to level the field for all players, including the little
ones as he puts it.

He also seems somewhat shocked at a piece of technical definition from some W3C
report that don't cause any fear to any knowledgeable CSS author.  I would
expect more from a men of his technical expertise even though this not being
his area.

Overall, a good read, though.

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"Gail Shaw" <initialsurname@sentech sa dot com> wrote:
> From an academic point, the perfect adherence to standards would be a good
> thing. However it they do that, so few people will use it that it will be a
> total waste of time and money.

I don't think so.  People have been targetting IE own standards -- including
extended javascript model -- for ages and if it suddenly truly adhered to an
impartial standard, it'd only be less trouble for others to be sure it works
about the same in other browsers.

The situation of consensual disagreement about what exactly something means in a
standard isn't as drastic as he puts it.  Though I admit engineering is less
prone to standardization misinterpretation errors because it relies on
unambiguous math formulae rather than words.  I bet the W3C reports would be
much less verbose at least. :)

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> I'm not sure if it's a good idea to link to an article without even 
> having read it all myself. But I skimmed through it and looks like it's 
> a *great* one.
> 
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html
> 
> (REALLY long, you have been warned)

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17Many-ManyWeb.png

Notice the 4th webpage.  >:3

-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.digitalartsuk.com

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GFA dpu- s: a?-- C++(++++) U P? L E--- W++(+++)>$
N++ o? K- w(+) O? M-(--) V? PS+(+++) PE(--) Y(--)
PGP-(--) t* 5++>+++++ X+ R* tv+ b++(+++) DI
D++(---) G(++) e*>++ h+ !r--- !y--
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

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nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> He also asks:  "what is a web standard?"  I'd say it's whatever that bunch of
> enterprises comprising the W3C -- including Microsoft -- do come up with in
> order to advance and to level the field for all players, including the little
> ones as he puts it.

  Maybe the relevant question is not "what *is* a standard", but more like
"what a standard *should be*".

  In an idea world a standard should be the approximate opposite of a
technological monopoly: Standardization means that basically anyone can
implement the standard, in other words, the technology becomes open.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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message de news: 47e1b2b4$1@news.povray.org...
> I'm not sure if it's a good idea to link to an article without even having 
> read it all myself. But I skimmed through it and looks like it's a *great* 
> one.

It's a good article, but I guess that anyone who is 1) moderately geeky and 
2) has to do IT (and particularly Internet) support for non-geek family 
members/friends/colleagues had already figured this out a long time ago...

I remember showing my images in 1997 at the INRIA (French national institute 
for research in computer science). INRIA had always been involved with W3C 
and the nice folks I met there really pushed hard for Web standards. 
Particularly, they had (and still have) a browser named Amaya, which was 
supposedly 100% W3C standard-compliant. When I came home, I downloaded it 
and saw that my website, which was 100% Netscape-compatible, was largely 
unreadable (and butt-ugly) with Amaya and would have required a complete 
redesign, which of course would have broken some  Netscape-only features 
that everybody (but the W3C folks) loved at that time and then alienated 
most of the visitors. Needless to say, I didn't redesign the site ;)

G.

-- 
**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray, Cinema 4D and Poser computer art
- Posters

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