Re: Murky ratings

I disagree with the approach that the guidelines should 
be based on for what browser something works or not.
For the guidelines to be stable they should be based on specs.

Collecting this data about browsers may be useful 
for _users_ to decide what browser to use. Authors should 
not be bothered with features of particular browsers.

I think that the guidelines already take current 
(in a few months obsolete) browsers features/bugs 
too much (e.g., "avoid word wrapping..." how can you do that?
this dependes on font size and resolution of the monitor.)

It is much more _practical_ to specify in what 
_theoretical_ browsers it works:

Example:
Use alt in AREA : HTML 3.2 and 4.0 conforming browsers.
Population affected: sighted users with images turned 
off, among others.

Note: HTML 2.0 does not support the AREA element thus an 
HTML2.0 browser wouldn't create a link at all.
Population affected: all users of HTML2.0 browsers.

Concerning institutions that have guidelines like "HTML3.2 and Bobby 
Approved", I say: if a page is not consistent with the guidelines
as it fails to implement an HTML4.0 feature (say, summary in TABLE), 
it should be upgraded to HTML4.0. Practically, any valid HTML3.2 
document is also a valid HTML4.0 transitional one. One doesn't 
have to rewrite the whole page, just to add the new feature.

Institutions should set guidelines like "current W3C 
recommendation" (current with respect to document's creation date,
not the guidelines date) rather than HTMLy.x . The approval of 
Bobby should also be dependent on Bobby's criteria on the 
creation date of the document. This way no inconsistencies 
can occur.
 
Regards,
Nir Dagan
http://www.econ.upf.es/%7Edagan/

Received on Wednesday, 13 May 1998 17:48:52 UTC