Re: I'm here because I'm lazy - a personal intro.

Once upon a time, I could code a "cutting edge" page that rendered properly
in every available browser.  Mosaic, Netscape, Lynx, that flaky little
Microsoft IE that no one used -- I could run the gamut.  This was around
the time of HTML 3.2, and I could make great sites because I really knew
the code I was writing.

Much of the browser wars were lost to me, busy as I was "growing the
business".  I'm in a small internet speciality shop in British Columbia
Canada, where we provide all sorts of Internet-related services, training,
and design, and are generally well-respected in the community.

However, one day I woke up and realised that IE was largely dominant,
Netscape was floundering, the old alternative browsers were all dead
(replaced by a new guard), and the standards which I based my sites on were
almost universally depreciated.  Thankfully, I hadn't used much NS4
proprietary stuff (who knew?), but I found myself with a lot of obsolete
code, and no clear upgrade path.

It's one thing to make my sites match published standards (that I can do
without difficulty), but another to actually _know_ the full potential of
these new languages, styles, and specs.  It seems to me that the vast
majority of websites out there have yet to achieve the full potential of
HTML 4.0, let alone what came next.  I don't want to be like that.  As a
developer, I face the same challenges that dog standards compliance
worldwide: finite resources, no time for extended training, a legacy of
older code, and impatient clients who will only ever use the browser that
comes with their OS.

I'm subscribed to this list because I'm looking for clarity.  I don't need
to be sold on the idea of standards compliance; I'm already a believer.
Like most webmasters, I want to build sites that are modern, interesting,
intuitive, and compliant not just with standards, but with browsers in
general.

There are a lot of paths to this goal, and opinions are, um, liberally
mixed.  I fear that I could learn this the wrong way, and leave with some
bad habits.  How does one shift a "classical" knowledge of HTML to today's
nifty specs, while maintaining compatibility, wow-factor, and standards?
Carefully, I'd imagine.  Thus, a discussion between like-minded people
under the auspices of the W3C should help me separate the good from the
bad.  I won't be asking a million random questions -- just taking a lot of
notes.  This is my first day here, and I've already learned a surprising
amount (keep those URLs coming!).

In closing, my hope is that this list can help me with my grey-matter
upgrade, and make Joseph McLean pass all relevant compliance checks.

-J

+=-
|Joseph Louis McLean
|Webmaster <> www.joseph.ca                "Sanity is not statistical"
|Wandering Macintosh Expert                    -George Orwell, 1984

Received on Monday, 8 July 2002 17:24:00 UTC