Re: color: NCSA Mosaic, Netscape, and HTML3

On 18 Jul 95 at 10:27, Ian S. Graham wrote:

[someone else wrote ...]
> > Netscape color extensions (like many other netscape extensions)
> > are hot air and presumptiously defined.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, style sheets are still being defined :)
 
> Hmm.... so something that is implemented, operational and popular is
> "hot air", while "still being defined" stylesheets are not???

No; Netscape's color extensions are hot air, and presumptiously 
defined, because they [Netscape] seem to have (or have had) the idea 
that by implementing these elements in their own browser - elements, 
I might add, which are entirely platform-dependent and conflict 
/wildly/ with some of the fundamentals principles guiding the 
development of HTML, version 3, those being "Platform 
Independence"[1], "Content not Presentation Markup"[2], and "Support 
for Non-Visual Media"[3] - that they can somehow "guide"[4] (force?) the 
path of the standardisation process, presumably by suggesting that 
since so many pages have been written with these attributes and tags, 
not to incorporate them would be unfair (since most of the Netscape 
tags or attributes are terribly appropriate as HTML).

On the other hand, stylesheets are not any of these precisely because 
they are still being defined - no any one current implementation is 
making any claims of being the definitive "standard", and in fact, by 
their nature, every implementation could be completely different 
without it mattering one iota. (The stylesheet for a graphical 
browser is hardly going to be appropriate for a browser which uses 
speech synthesis, for example).

The fact that something is implemented, operational and popular does 
not necessarily make it either appropriate or correct.

References

<URL:http://www.hpl.hp.co.uk/people/dsr/html/intro.html>

	[1]	para 19
	[2] para 20
	[3] para 22

<URL:http://home.netscape.com/assist/net_sites/html_extensions.html>

    [4] para 2, specifically:
        "Netscape Communications will continue to work with the 
         appropriate standards bodies, including W3C and the authors 
         of other WWW browsers, in an attempt to have these 
         extensions available in all browsers in the near future."

Regards,



Chris
--
Chris Tilbury, Estates Office, University of Warwick, UK, CV4 7AL
Tel: +44 1203 523523 x2665                   Fax: +44 1203 524444
MIME mail welcomed      mailto:Chris.Tilbury@estate.warwick.ac.uk

Received on Tuesday, 18 July 1995 11:24:32 UTC