- From: gary turner <gary.kk5st@gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 11:02:27 -0500
Jon Barnett wrote: <snip> > Prompting a user for any sort of consent would be useless and confusing, > because users don't know what MIME types are. Even a dialog that says > "This > document claims to be plain text, but looks like a hypertext document. Do > you want to render it as a hypertext document?" would be useless and > confusing because, frankly, users don't know the difference between plain > text, web pages, and Microsoft Word. Trying to outguess the author or server configuration is not necessary, and IMO is beyond the scope of the browser. The /knowledgeable/ user could be given a means of switching MIME types within the UA's tools. I don't see any compelling reason, though. > <snip> > > I understand your concern. You want authors to correct mistakes in their > code (and server configurations) to comply with standards. Authors should > be encouraged to do so, but only in ways that are not detrimental to end > users. End users don't make a good middle man for telling an author when > his code doesn't agree with a spec. End users tend to blame the browser > first. > Absolutely. Authors and server admins have the responsibility to get things right. What I do not understand is how having a browser follow the rules is detrimental to the user. On the contrary, ignoring the server or meta content-type is harmful. Others have cited examples. The author is the first user, depending on his test-bed UAs to show him his errors. Not all end users are gormless, and their feedback is valuable. cheers, gary -- Anyone can make a usable web site. It takes a graphic designer to make it slow, confusing and painful to use.
Received on Wednesday, 23 May 2007 09:02:27 UTC