Re: Support Existing Content

On 5/4/07 7:36 AM, "Geoffrey Sneddon" <foolistbar@googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 4 May 2007, at 11:15, Gareth Hay wrote:
> 
>> On 4 May 2007, at 10:54, Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> [aside: maybe it's because I grew up with "Segmentation Fault"
>>>> fatal errors that I don't see that kind of error handling as
>>>> "wrong"]
>>> 
>>> To write from the end user POV: What is a segmentation fault?
>>> What's segmented?
>>> 
>>>> I think "draconian" error handling leads to a much more educated
>>>> author.
>>>> Doesn't  "Parse error : line 5" - tell you all you need to know?
>>> 
>>> What's "parse" mean on a computer sense?
>>> 
>>>> I certainly wouldn't be to adverse to
>>>> "This page was written as HTML5, but it is invalid. Error is
>>>> 'non-conformity - line 5'. Do you want to try this as html4?"
>>> 
>>> Conformity to what?
>>> 
>> I don't understand your 3 points here.
>> Is viewing a website, especially if it charges, not the same as
>> buying a piece of software.
>> If it doesn't work, who is to blame?
>> if a program crashes your computer, and you get an error dump, who
>> are you blaming? Intel for making the chip inside? or the author?
>> I'm not asking for the end user to see error messages, ever, I'm
>> asking for authors to take the responsibility to write correct code.
>> I /honestly/ don't see how users are going to see these error
>> messages /if/ the author has done his job.
>> (And for that matter if he /hasn't/ it's no worse than the site
>> upgrading their, say SQL db, and it not working at all.
>> Do you blame MySQL or whoever for releasing a new version? or do
>> you blame the site for not checking the upgrade in a non-production
>> environment first?)
>> 
>> Someone /has/ to take responsibility, if the author is allowed to
>> be lax, he can blame the UA vendor, and the UA vendor is able to
>> blame the author. Why can't we implement it, so it /is/ the fault
>> of the author?
> 
> 7% of RSS/Atom feeds are mal-formed XML. Why don't those get fixed?
> Also, if error handling is well specified, then the UA either follows
> the defined error handling, so it is either the UA or the author's
> fault, and they cannot blame one-another.
> 
> Also, how does the author see the errors yet the end user does not?
> Bare in mind on sites like MySpace the author _is_ the end user.


Why are we arguing about this? This already exists.
I have firebug, javascript console, and tidy based validation extensions in
firefox. If there's an error I know about it. Author friendly
browsers/extensions will gain popularity with authors.

So just say "User agents are required to have author friendly html &
javascript error reporting features."

And with myspace, even if my user created content is perfect, the
environment it gets put into is a total mess to begin with.

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Received on Friday, 4 May 2007 15:00:11 UTC