RE: Browser Issues

Summary: I thnk relying on "*A* most compliant browser" is going to get us
into as much trouble as we are already in, and we have to recognise that
unless browsers become perfect we are going to live with some compromises...

detail:
There are a large range of disabilities, and a large range of document
formats / applet languages / object formats / whatever they are called.

The range of disabilities means that it is a large amount of work to make one
browser that meets everyone's needs - at a minimum we would expect browsers
that are triple-A compliant to the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines, and
there are currently none of those.

So different people are going to find different browsers are the best
available fit for their needs, and the very least is that we need to try and
get people to use "one of the more compliant browsers".

In addition, as already discussed, it is unrealistic to expect most people to
upgrade their browsers every month and learn to use the relevant new
features, yet new browser versions are released every few weeks, and any of
those is potentially the new "most compliant browser" for a given set of
needs. I think in many cases it takes more time than that even to do the real
testing to find that out, let alone actualy change over systems (and
associated support features, etc.)

As some balance to the difficulties of working with reality, there are some
good things - most browsers are getting better, many different browsers are
available and doing different but good things, so getting a new version of
any browser is almost certainly a good thing to do...

cheers

Charles

On Tue, 26 Feb 2002, RUST Randal wrote:

  >Further, it is not specifically older browsers that are
  >"non-standard" -
  >there are known standards compliance issues in every browser I
  >know of, and
  >some of these cause serious accessibility problems. A reason
  >why people use
  >older browsers is because in some cases those are the ones
  >that cause them
  >the fewest problems.

  i agree.

  the reality is that we'll probably never have a browser that is completely
  standardized, so we'll have to settle with a "most-compliant" browser,
  rather than "compliant."

  randal


-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI    fax: +1 617 258 5999
Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia
(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)

Received on Wednesday, 27 February 2002 08:20:05 UTC