Re: Behavior, scripts, CSS

From: Walter Ian Kaye <walter@natural-innovations.com>
Date: Tue, Aug 8, 2000, 12:58 PM

> Tantek Celik wrote:
>>expediency is typically immediately cheaper purely in terms of time cost.
>
> Key word being "immediately". Look at the trouble Netscape had when trying
> to graft CSS onto their 4.x browser. When it became clear that it would be
> very expensive to fix their browser, they went open-source with mozilla.org
> to avoid shouldering the cost themselves.
> And adding to the cost is that the Mac Mozilla requires OS 8.5

To be fair, there are several MacOS facilities only available in OS 8.5 and
above which if you can depend on, simplify a few things.  This is typically
true with any OS revision and those above it.

> MacIE
> requires only 7.6.1

However, once one has coded for a particular OS revision, it is almost
always less trouble to incrementally maintain support for it rather than
abandon it and make sure you haven't broken anything - an advantage of
evolving a code base in-place rather than starting from scratch. (OS X does
change some of that though).

> Mac Mozilla requires OS 8.5 and installs
> three-thousand-three-hundred (3,300) files. That's a 'zilla alright.
> MacIE
> requires only 7.6.1 and a fraction of the files, so the user can get by
> without spending tons of $$$ on software and hardware upgrades.

As far as number of files - well, suffice it to say, before the HFS+ disk
format, it was tremendously better in terms of disk space efficiency for the
user to have fewer files (besides the obvious usability benefits of not
cluttering the user's file system), hence a good goal for all Mac
developers.

I would expect that a final release of a Mac product would address such
issues, which might not be worth addressing until that point.

> (How'd you do it?:)

Let's just say that there may still be a few advantages to "small-group"
"owned-source" _development_.  Just ask the Opera folks.

Of course I could tell you about the Starbucks Espresso Brownies, MTV Dawn
Patrol, PROGRESS Wednesday nights and perhaps a Stompy or two - but you
probably wouldn't believe me.

>>there's probably a website (shrine?) somewhere dedicated to such things.
>
> My favorite is the Elcaset (any long-time audiophiles here?)
> <http://www.wps.com/dead-media/notes/6/066.html>

Cool.  I knew someone would know of at least such shrine.

Tantek

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Hey, why do we need bunk beds?              http://www.microsoft.com/mac/ie/

Received on Wednesday, 16 August 2000 04:12:12 UTC