Re: Make Microsoft follow the spec.

On Fri, 02 Mar 2001 09:37:18 +0100, glazman@netscape.com (Daniel
Glazman) wrote:

[...]

>Anyway, I want to add, from a very personal point, that Chris Wilson has
>been a key person in the existence of CSS.

Well, MS did not even have a browser of their own at the time when works
on defining CSS1 started, the question is if Mr. Wilson was even
employed by MS at that time, my memory seems to indicate that he was not
(but I may be wrong on the exact details of that).

>Without his personal involvement into CSS on behalf of Microsoft,
>we would never be using CSS browsers today.

There may be some truth in that. An official message came from Redmond
that they would support CSS in their upcoming browser (IE3). I still
remember reading about it some years back.

Later, IE3 came out as a "personal" experiment in CSS1 support, where
the "official defense" for the result is that "the CSS1 spec was not in
recommendation status" when the CSS support was implemented and
released. (Mr. Wilson has said so him self, and I have heard it with my
own ears)

Interpreting the em unit as pixels came out as one of the bigger
individual "flaws" of IE3 but can not be excused by "the defense"
though, since the definition of em's never changed from day one of its
inclusion in the proposed CSS spec. (yes, I have that as first hand info
too, directly from the originators)

Let's face it, IE3 just showed off some unexperienced coding, it's
history now and should be written off as such.

>Standards are not perfect, code is not perfect. Both are made by human
>beings for human beings, all far from perfect. 

But some of it is better than others, right?

Isn't it amazing that MS now have two code bases that supports CSS, one
that is reportedly very good in MacIE, and then another for Windows that
lags in serious ways.

(silly minds like mine may want to think that the good results in MacIE
has something to do with the fact that some of the best interpreters of
the CSS specs also happens to be Mac users, and that the person
responsible for the Mac CSS support code finds it easy to listen to and
act on suggestions from the outside)

As it seems to be with Redmond, one has to be representing some big
money org before suggestions are even considered, never have I seen
Redmond ask "the community" for advice on how to proceed. A change of
attitude here may prove beneficial for both users and the producer.

As it is now, when at least here in Sweden it is more expensive to buy a
new PC with a blank hard drive as compared to one with Win98
pre-installed, the wrong message is sent from the producer and that then
leads to "flames" that originates in "user frustration".

-- 
Jan Roland Eriksson <rex@css.nu> .. <URL:http://css.nu/>

Received on Saturday, 3 March 2001 01:43:29 UTC