RE: HTML4, CSS2, and XML: Accelerate Conformance!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-html-request@w3.org [mailto:www-html-request@w3.org]On Behalf
> Of MWhisman@aol.com
> Sent: Friday, January 08, 1999 12:58 PM
> To: www-html@w3.org
> Subject: Re: HTML4, CSS2, and XML: Accelerate Conformance!

> 1. By meeting the standard, is a company prevented from
> innovations (new tags,
> new ways of using standard tags, etc.) that would expand
> visitors' ability to
> use and enjoy the Web?

No. The problem to date has been that browser developers have not taken
advantage of the standard-friendly extensibility mechanisms built into the
specs. A couple of examples: browser developers have not provided DTDs that
accurately describe the HTML syntax they support; most browsers have
virtually ignored CSS1's description of forward-compatible parsing.

> Such add-ons are one reason why we now can
> view and do
> so much on the Web. They give sites and publishers a competitive
> advantage.
> Yes, there are also many bugs that should be fixed.

Such add-ons have been designed to create browser-specific pages. Backward
compatibility hasn't been given much thought in the implementation of such
extensions because browser vendors want to capitalize on Web authors' use of
these extensions, leveraging it to get users to upgrade their browsers.

Braden

Received on Friday, 8 January 1999 13:48:14 UTC