Re: animation frenzy

Warren P. Chi (warrenpchi@bansheeparadigm.com)
Wed, 18 Dec 1996 01:25:36 -0800 

Message-ID: <32B7B890.4117@bansheeparadigm.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 01:25:36 -0800
From: "Warren P. Chi" <warrenpchi@bansheeparadigm.com>
To: David Perrell <davidp@earthlink.net>
CC: www-html@w3.org
Subject: Re: animation frenzy

> Jonathan Gapen wrote:
> 
>    The whole "browser war" thing to date has been also a battle of style and
> flash over substance.  If they can't put all sorts of gimmicky, useless little
> bits on their pages, how can they demonstrate the superiority of Internet
> Explorer?


Isn't this essentially the same argument over the <BLINK> tag so many years past?  
What's basically at fault here isn't so much that browsers are going buck-wild trying to 
one up each other with eye-candy, its that there is no basic standard to adhere to.  And 
in the absence of such guidance, chaos reigns.

What needs to happen is that W3 or IETF or whoever needs to establish some kind of spec 
for browsers to abide by . . . and needs to do it in a more expedient fashion.  It 
shouldn't take on the order of years to approve a draft revision . . . .

How many of us wish to do away with the "Best viewed with [browser of choice]" comment 
found in 99% of the sites out there?  How many of us don't want to have to choose 
between VBScript & JavaScript?  How many of us don't need the hassle of whether people 
have the right plug-ins?

Its an ambitious one I know, but there needs to be an expansive, universal starting 
point.  Not just a draft, or a spec, but a set standard that rises above "Microsoft vs. 
Netscape."  Hopefully, we're all doing our part in that here . . . let's just all pray 
that common sense prevails.

> David Parrell wrote:
>
> Easy. MSIE has more powerful layout tools than NSN. Style and flash
> aren't synonymous. Static pages can be laid out with dynamic placement.
> Flash can be a useful tool to gain attention, but overused it's an
> annoyance, and thereby defeats its intent.

I tend to disagree here.  Navigator offers just as much potential for style and 
interactivity.  Besides, what it doesn't have . . . our skills and imaginations can make 
up for.  Who among us here don't use invisible tables, 1 pix X 1 pix gif89a's, and 
layering items through backgrounds in our little bags of layout tricks?

But here's what I really think of MSIE vs. NSN . . . I think NSN should win because [and 
this may not be fair, but its right], it just shouldn't be a Microsoft world out there.

Guilty of my own biases,

Warren Chi
The Banshee Paradigm Group