Re: Axis attribute

You are absolutely right on the need to be able to sell the idea to
management. I guess the idealist in me is speaking in this matter. But on
the other hand, the circle need to be broken, just like you said. Otherwise
it would be like building railways for steam traiins ni 2008, and we have
chosen not to do that. The companies building tools to render web based
content in one way or another need to take aim at building according to
these standards, or the whole idea of a global network with information that
everyone can use is lost the way I see it. Let's hope that the start
developing like this, and it will be a little bit easier to sell the idea to
management.

Best regards,

Joachim Andersson

2008/11/28 Patrick Lauke <P.H.Lauke@salford.ac.uk>

>
> > Joachim Andersson
>
> > What I was saying is that if a user agent doesn't support an element
> > or an attribute, that is in no way a reason not to use it. If it is
> useful
> > in its declaration in a specification and if it doesn't present a
> usability
> > issue like longdesc, it should be used as specified. The user agents
> will
> > hopefully get to a point where they can handle these functions
> properly.
>
> Unfortunately, although I agree with the principle, it's very tough in a
> commercial setting to justify additional quality assurance, training and
> development for features that are simply not implemented just yet. It's
> a hard sell to managers..."the standard says we should be using X, for
> accessibility, although at the moment no user agent actually supports
> it, but in future they hopefully will".
>
> And it then becomes a chicken and egg problem: user agents will most
> likely only support it once there's a critical mass of pages
> speculatively using these features, as otherwise it won't add value to
> their product and by extension to their customers; web developers in a
> commercial setting will most likely only implement them once user agents
> show actual support.
>
>
> The idealist in me agrees that the cycle needs to be broken, and that we
> should use features per spec even when they're not used in any real user
> agent, hoping that in future they will...but the pragmatist just knows
> that, unless you can sell your boss/management to the idea of "we're
> doing it, nobody benefits from it now, but in future they will", it's
> unlikely...
>
> P
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