RE: The Netscape / Microsoft / Future Quagmire

Yes -- exactly my point -- the more people that design for the latest   
generation of browsers, the more people will upgrade and the closer we'll   
come to a standard -- frankly, I don't care who wins this browser war --   
I never wanted to see Microsoft win, but their 3.0 browser was an   
incredible product -- and why not take advantage of the tags they   
support?   Again, this is the future of the web -- more advanced   
development and more advanced web pages.   HTML needs to advance with new   
tags offering not only new formatting tools but also more structured   
presentation -- I don't think MS or Netscape should decide this -- but if   
they continue to, I will simply design for what they have put together.   
 In time, people will realize that to stay with the future of the   
Internet you must advance with it -- I'm tired of people saying the web   
should only be text -- a great web page is as much about presentation as   
it is content (this is true with almost anything) -- and a truly   
outstanding web page is the seamless synthesis of the two.

Jason O'Brien
jaobrien@ftt.net


 ----------
From:  www-html-request[SMTP:www-html-request@w3.org]
Sent:  Friday, October 18, 1996 8:04 AM
To:  snowhare
Cc:  jaobrien; www-html
Subject:  Re: The Netscape / Microsoft / Future Quagmire

  From: Benjamin Franz <snowhare@netimages.com>

| I write to a subset of the 3.2 DTD + CSS1 stylesheets. My documents   
reach
| over 98% of people (I use JPEGs and TABLEs - else it would be 99.9%+ -
| lynx really needs to implement TABLE...). Do my pages look *best* on   
NS3.0
| and MSIE 3.0?  Damn straight they do. Do I annoy people uselessly with
| 'get NS/MSIE 3.0' buttons and 'Looks better in browser of the week'
| labels? Not on your life. The people who *have* those browsers already
| know it looks nice in them. Those who have other browsers are not going   
to
| switch just because I say so - why annoy them?  The pages are usable   
(even
| attractive) in nearly any browser.
 ---

I have to disagree.  The "looks best in..." and the "download ... now"
buttons are useful.  They give people a way to know whether their choice
of browser is getting in the way of their use of the information they
use.  It's not an annoyance, it's a piece of advice.  Obviously, you
have to design so those with other browsers are at least adequately
supported, but it's good service to your users to let them know what
they need to do to get the best value from your offerings.

And people *will* switch when they start seeing a lot of pages
suggesting a different browser - especially if the suggested changes are
simply to later versions of the browser they're already using.  Or,
possibly more important, they'll start pushing the vendor of their
preferred browser to incorporate the same new features as the ones
suggested by the pages they use.

I think it's a very useful mechanism for the continuing development of
the Web.

scott

 --
scott preece
motorola/mcg urbana design center       1101 e. university, urbana, il   
  61801
phone:  217-384-8589                      fax:  217-384-8550
internet mail:  preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com

Received on Friday, 18 October 1996 10:14:54 UTC