[Zope] [OT] RE: Another Zope in the wild - Anarchy Online

[Bill Anderson]

On 01 Jul 2001 23:57:29 +0200, infos wrote:
> ---
> > i don't think you can blame webdesigner to focus on making "cool" stuff
> > instead of fighting netscape's buggy implementation of web standards...
> Sure you can. is the point of the site to look cool, or to get osmething
> done? if the point is to get something done, then coolness is secondary,
> and focussing on coolness is faultiness.
> ---
> 
> when designing this kind of websites (game/community), the main point *is*
> coolness (this is what the client buys).
> 
> ---
> > i've made a lot of webdesigns and evrytime i could i made it
> > netscpae/macintosh/etc... friendly, but sometimes you just have to get rid
> > of netscape 4.x because it is such a piece of junk that you simply can't
> > work with it...
> Actually, if you look at it, NS 4.x follows more standards. IE made it's
> popularity by ignoring invalid HTML. The big, big, problem people have
> with Netscape's handling of *HTML* is that it will quite often not
> render incomplete table definitions. Just as it should be.
> ---
> 
> this is a JOKE, netscape's implementation is less compliant (check
> http://www.webstandards.org/upgrade/index_n4.html as marc suggests...). yes,
> ie handles pages that are incorrect and that's definitely *not* a good
> thing, but netscape actually forces you to use bad code just to circumvent
> its inherent bugs. the worst example is maybe the dreaded dhtml position on
> reload bug
> (http://www.webreference.com/dhtml/column21/addendum2/col21addII2.html)
> which is the best example of baaaad design.

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.

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.

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.

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 ?

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.



> ---
> Other than that, it does have nasty issues with javascript. Though, in
> fairness there are a lot of cross-browser libraries that handle most of
> the differences.
> ---
> 
> but having to put in an additional 12k of code just to circumvent bug is
> really annoying... and those css issues... aaarararaggghhhh... :-(

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
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.

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."

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


You will note that even MS makes their pages look the same in IE and
NS/MOZ. Yu can bet they don't rewrite everything for each page/site.
 
> ---
> So what does that have to do with HTML??
> Dhtml is NOT html. it is javascript. If you code "out of the w3 book",
> you are _not_ doing dhtml. You are doing some sort of client-side
> scripting.
> ---
> 
> 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:

"""
The DIV and SPAN elements, in conjunction with the id and class
attributes, offer a generic mechanism for adding structure to documents.
These elements define content to be inline (SPAN) or block-level (DIV)
but impose no other presentational idioms on the content. Thus, authors
may use these elements in conjunction with style sheets, the lang
attribute, etc., to tailor HTML to their own needs and tastes.
"""

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.

In either event, we are getting verrry off topic (as if we were on topic
to begin with ;).

Cheers, Bill