Re: CSS is doomed (10 years per version ?!?)

Orion Adrian,

I've read everything you've had to say thus far, and while you're
arguements have some merrit... they're essentially flawed.  The flaw is
this:

You are depending on microsoft to do a number of things they historically
have refused to do.  Specifically, MS has refused to comply with any
standard they didn't invent.  This is painfully obvious in IE, especially
concerning CSS.  Just because MS hasn't done it does not doom the product
in question.  With the continuing success of Gecko as a CSS renderer, the
responsibility of implementation for the css standards is on the general
open source public who chooses to implement it.  With that said, it is
quite plausible to, after the css revision is finalized, expect a possible
implementation on major browsers (IE Firefox and other Gecko based
products) within months, not years.  HOWEVER, that has a lot to do with how
those open source contributors view the material put out by w3c.  If it's
compelling and exciting (as I find nth-child and the css 3 column support)
it could see implementation rather quickly.

For example:  CSS 3 column support is already seeing the light of day, and
we haven't even finalized CSS 2.1...  Firefox 1.1's implementation of it
conforms to the standards that are currently published, and while they're
moz specific tags, it would take very little effort for these tag
references to be changed to the actual tags in question.  The only
difference between their names is a -moz...

With that in mind, I've got a couple of closing statement.

MS Obviously doesn't care about standards at all.  I say this because MS
publically had no plans to update IE at all until Firefox started kicking
their pants in the new "browser war".  And the only reason that IE7 might
support the standards is because a serious % of users are using Firefox for
specifically that reason (not to mention that it blocks the whole Spyware
issue)... with that in mind, I submit to you that we'll be lucky to see any
CSS implementation over what which we've got currently.  Is that CSS's
fault?  No it's MicroSoft's, and until they're willing to actually adhere
to the standard (which they'll never be) IE cannot be our litmus test.

With that in mind, if we take your approach, we might as well disband all
companies everywhere that support standards and the production of Open
Source products.  The reason is that MS's tendancy has always been to
obscure what they do, and dominate the competition.  They don't want anyone
else to be able to adhere to their "standards".  Control is their game and
that's why they fight the standard... because they can't control it.

Finally, I'd like to submit to you that your arguement is flawed because we
are in a unique time.  Never in the history of mankind have we had this
much communication between people.  And during a large portion of that
time, our communication has been dominated by MS and their software.  They
refused to update their software for multiple years, and with the
advancement of CSS during a large portion of those years... any numbers we
have concerning it are going to be heavily skewed.  The tendancy to stray
from that which we know is very limited, and only with the eventual
addoption of browsers other that IE will the standards even matter.
Without competition there's no need for a standard.  MS has illustrated
that rather nicely at this point, and I don't think that you can really
base your arguement on that extremely skewed perspective.

This is all meant to be as peacefully said as possible.  I'm just
presenting the reasons I think your arguement concerning css is flawed...
or at the very least a decade or two pre-mature.

Kris

Received on Thursday, 30 June 2005 16:30:20 UTC