[WEB4LIB] Re: browser differences

[Thomas Dowling]

>
>So instead of coding for the browser of the moment (or the year),
>why not code to W3C specification and demand that the browser vendors
>support the spec?  ("Demand" in multiple senses: tell them they must;
>don't use their browser if they don't; etc.)


As an old hand-coder, I find myself in the dark about what mass-market page 
editors do in this regard.  In vi, emacs, textpad, etc. we can code to any 
standard we choose.  But if someone drops a copy of Dreamweaver or 
Frontpage on your desk and says, "you're the new library web designer" what 
options do you really have?

A couple years ago, I tested copies of several of the popular HTML editors 
of the day and came to the conclusion that most of them generated invalid 
HTML by default; several were incapable of being made to generate valid 
markup in any circumstance, all were willing to allow invalid markup, and 
all encouraged presentational hacks (<blockquote> for indenting, etc. - 
which I'm appalled to see is still in Mozilla Composer).

I greatly fear that the bad coding practices fostered by bad browsers now 
mostly gone away have been entrenched if not perpetuated by editing 
programs that A) sacrifice good code for overdone backward compatiblity, 
and B) try to put a Word-like editing interface on something that is very 
much not a word processing task.


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu