RE: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here! (was: RE: margin element s)

The line just proceeding the John Philpot Curran quote is of interest,
considering the context.

"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to
the active." 

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles F. Munat [mailto:chas@munat.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 10:33 PM
To: 'David Higgins'; www-html@w3.org
Subject: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here! (was: RE: margin elements)


David Higgins wrote:
"You shouldn't have to alter your design because one piece of software does
not adhere to the standards!"

Au contraire: you shouldn't abandon the standards just because one poorly
designed piece of software doesn't adhere to them. Why let Netscape dictate
the way the Web works? If we all build sites to standards, the browser
manufacturers will build the browsers to standards, too. As long as you let
them make the decisions, you'll get whatever they think will give them a
competitive advantage.

From here on out, all web designers should actively boycott any and all new
browsers or browser versions that stray from the standards. That includes
Internet Explorer 6, if Microsoft doesn't keep its promises to support CSS,
DOM, HTML, etc.

If enough of us stand up and demand standards-compliant browsers, we'll get
them. If we keep adapting our work to anything browser manufacturers decide
to hand us, we'll get what we deserve.

Furthermore, we should be educating Web users about the importance of
standards compliance and encouraging them to switch to standards-compliant
browsers, the best of which currently is Netscape 6.

To quote a great Irishman, John Philpot Curran:

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal
vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence
of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt."

So the future of the Web depends on our unwillingness to settle for less
than full standards compliance... which condition if we break, proprietary
hell is both the consequence of our crime and the punishment of our guilt.
And as far as I'm concerned, if you're not a part of the solution, you're
part of the problem.

IMO, of course.

Charles F. Munat,
Seattle, Washington