--- An again, an example of something separate from HTML. no matter how much you may like to believe otherwise, DHTML is NOT a standard. DHTML is NOT HTML. CSSW, is a _different_ standard than HTML. --- waow, great... so we have this so-called browser not being able to render anything else than html... that is a big help to all of us ;-))) and what about bugs like table width ? frameset size ? non-transparent radio buttons ? and lots more... those are html 4.x bugs and ugly ones... i don't see ie bugs of this magnitude... --- Oh, and BTW, one thing you leave out is the _fact_ that the way IE behaves is different on MAC than it is on Windows (In many cases, the MAC behaviour is correct, btw). Again, I _have_ done the research, thank you very much. I have hundreds of bugs I can send you to on IE 5,/5.5, and 4.x. I can also show you how many of these are not bugs, in either browser, but are in reality, simply differneces in implementation of incocnlusive, incomplete, or vagueness in the original standards. --- netscape too behaves differently on windows and macintosh, and thats a bad thing too. in this area, they're both pretty inconsistent. --- yet, for some reason, people like taking a browser that renders incorrect HTML, and use it as teh standard of behaviour in things that are _not_ defined, and then take it further and insist that many of the peculiarities of IE are the way the standard says, when they are flat out wrong. --- i insisted on this point in my previous post. it *is* a bad thing (to render invalid pages), and that's *not* the reason why i prefer ie over netscape. --- And, from my position, browsers displaying incorrect HTML are far worse than browsers that have quirky implementations you code around. There is no reason for people to learn the correct way, when there is no 'penalty' for doing it the wrong way. "Why close the table when it displays in the browser anyway?" "It doesn't display in all browsers.""Well then those are buggy, I won't worry about them" That is the real-world effect. That is a newbies introduction to the world of standards. What good are standards when failure to follow is ignored ? --- this has nothing to do with ie vs netscape, this has to do with the way people code. the problem of newbies not closing tables is quite irrelevant since they are ? should be ? using software to generate the page and "should" html tidy their pages when they're done. they are not doing it and it's a problem, but it's not limited to ie (what about those leftmargin tags ?) those actually force people to put bad/inexistant codes in their pages... the real world effect i see is that clients who pay to have a website want it to look nice period. if you tell your client you can't do this or that because of netscape, they're very likely to say "scrap netscape, how much marketshare anyway ?" so in term of real world, netscape is pretty much dead over here (europe). it is a problem too, but this is the real world (the world where 80% of people use ie) and it costs more (time/money) to make a web site netscape compatible (assuming you start by designing a standard compatible page). of course, experience, code libraries, etc... can make it easier, but it doesn't remove those dammmmm bugs. --- Oh, and just for fun, I took a trip back to the w3 website to see if by some chance, somebody slippe din a DHTML standard. nope, there is not one. Since oyu cannot lay claim to a DHTML standard, you cannot lay cliam to a particular browsers means of handling client-side scripting as a bug, simply because it differes from another. DHTML is a marketing term, not a standard. --- rethoric rethoric... --- Please, this is such a weak argument on many fronts. I'll put my straight HTML up against your javascript anyday, and see who has a smaller download. People concerned about a one-time download of a javascript library, are not using DHTML. The cycle is returning to --- the problem is you have to make/use a library to handle things !!! knowing how to defeat a bug doesn't kill it, it just forces you to add more code onto something !!! --- substance over style, and the use of cross-browser scripting is but one herald and earmark. In addition, these libraries provide more functionality than one itty bitty bug workaround. They provide a set of widgets and functionsin an API that allow the developer to develop widgets that are cross-browser, and do so with much more ease than developing them from whole cloth for a single browser. --- true --- This argument also is tantamount to this statement: "I know that there are ways of solving my problem, but I don't care, I'd rather make the end-user suffer because I was too lazy to use them, and to make it better,I'll blame it on slow downloads, thus making it look like I am doing them a favor." --- i'm *not* saying i'm leaving those user in the dark, but i'm saying that it's a pain in the ass to have to do it just because of thir browser... --- The big hype of the internet is finally being realized for the hype that it is,and thus we see the fall of many sites that were just a little bit of content wrapped in a huge pretty wrapper. In the rush to dominate, many companies bought into the propganda, and are now reaping the result; dying dot coms. Look at the more popular user-interactive sites, the ones that have survived the fallout, and you will see that most of them are: a) Cross platform b) Cross browser c) Dominantly server-side d) presenting substance over style --- i do agree with that, but this is has nothing to do with ie vs netscape. it is a design issue, if i want to / have to make a complex page i should be able to make it. ---
div positioning is definitely xhtml. Note the X in XHTML. XHTML is not HTML. XHTML is a stricter set of HTML, reformulated to be an XML application. XHTML is the current _recommendation_ for the next generation of HTML. As such, it is not HTML. SGML is an application of SGML. Why the change? According to the w3, it is because there are becoming more ways of accessing internet data. This means multiple kinds of clients, as well as multiple implementations. In HTML 4.0.1 (aka, the current standard), div is not a positioning tool:
i thought XHTML was the current standard (http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/#recommendations) --- Positioning is an aspect of style application. The w3 HTML 4.x standard doe snot indicate div is to be used for positioning. if you want to complain about a browser not positioning it the way anotehr does, or the way you think it does, your argument lies with the browser's implentation, or lack thereof, of CSS/CSS-P. --- ok, and *again* this doesn't come out on netscape's side... my point is just that when designing web pages (using html 3, 4 , x and css, javascript (ecmascript) or whatever other *standard*, netscape does a poor job with version 4.x bonnyk