Re: Conformance ratings (was: Extra! Microsoft beats Netscape in the race for non-conformance!)

>> Having error counts displayed in the search engines should give the authors
>> incentive to clean up their act.

I for one wouldn't be swayed by this at all.

First of all, I've yet to see a validation system stay up to the minute
with new extensions.  I don't think it is at all fair to penalize pages that
use extensions if the underlaying code is solid.

And I don't expect anyone to start putting DOCTYPE notes in their pages.
I'm not going to, it's a pain in the ass to keep that stuff straight.
And since it shouldn't be necessary for browsers, why should I?  If a
browser doesn't recognize a tag or attribute, it ignores it.  Why should it
care about the DOCTYPE?>

The web is an open playing field.  If I decide to use <FONT COLOR="#rrggbb">
on my pages, that's my decision.  I know very well that only NS 2.0 will
use it.

And I'll tell you how I've used it - important warnings are in bold text,
in 2.0 they are also bright red.  It makes them leap out so user can't
miss them.  Since I maintain the support pages, these notes are things we
never want a user to miss.  I used the extension because it was available.
I did all I could to emphasize it in HTML 2.0 first, I could just do *more*
in NS.  (Now, some of the marketing pages have different colors headers
just because you can and it looks snazzier.  Who's to say that's wrong?)

-MZ
--
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Received on Monday, 12 February 1996 21:25:57 UTC