Re: Browsers will never get it right [was Re:Blocked-base parsing?]

On 9/15/05, Emrah BASKAYA <emrahbaskaya@hesido.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 16:06:25 +0300, Orion Adrian <orion.adrian@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> >
> > On 9/15/05, Emrah BASKAYA <emrahbaskaya@hesido.com> wrote:
> >> On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 05:43:37 +0300, Orion Adrian
> >> <orion.adrian@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >
> >> On: Re: Block-based parsing; allow lies
> >> Having the same exact DNA
> >> never could help any species, there has to be a flexibility for times
> >> when the need be.
> >
> > This argument makes so sense to me? Doesn't that mean we should be
> > abandoning standards since products based on them have the same DNA?
> > Doesn't that mean we should all start using different languages, built
> > uniquely for us, so we have different DNA? RSS has managed to remove
> > the issues of the past. I have yet to see an RSS feed that says, best
> > viewed in X. That's an issue only when you allow styling code to be
> > determined by the author.
> 
> No, that's not what I meant. I am not claiming there are RSS feeds that
> say they prefer a specific app, what I meant is, ditching author's
> recommandations on presentation and author-provided functionality
> (HTML+CSS+Javascript) means that user will view all pages with their own
> UA's style, or his own style, using his UA's own functions. The site could
> not add anything to the table, and if needed a specific functionality,
> author would have to suggest using a specific UA, or provide his own UA.
> Every bit of detail would have to be described by the standard. There
> would not be any author-induced innovations in usage (e.g. yellow fade
> technique).

We've traded in client-side innovation for server-side innovation at
many times the cost. There are maybe 100 clients out there and
billions of pages. Why try to innovate on the server side; it makes no
sense.

And yes every little bit that we care about would need to be described
in the standard. But that's the only way anything is going to happen.
It wasn't until RSS told us what we were looking at in detail that new
functionality could be added.

HTML does a wonderful job of describing what things should look at and
a lousy job of telling us what things are in detail. It's too generic
to be of use as anything other than presentational queue and simple
document structures.

HTML tells us that something is a heading, but not a heading of what.
It tells us something is a table, but it doesn't tell us what's in the
table. It tells us what cells are next to each other, but doesn't tell
us how the cells relate to each other or what kinds of data are
inside; numbers, serial codes, names? And until everyone can agree on
a way of communicating that in a non-ambiguous way that computers can
understand we're really nowhere at all when it comes to new
capabilities. Until we do that, it pretty much just reading things off
a page (screen reader or no).

-- 

Orion Adrian

Received on Thursday, 15 September 2005 14:58:59 UTC