Re: Web Reliability [was: Session-id and proxies (was: Re: session-id redux) ]

On Thu, 27 Jul 1995, Steve H Rose wrote:
<snip>
> Please do not take this as strong criticism.  I <strong>greatly</strong>
> appreciate all the work of the standards committees, believe very strongly
> in standards, teach compliant HTML as part of my HTML CyberClass, advocate
> standards etc.  But, it is an uphill battle.  The opinion of MANY people
> is that Netscape IS the standard, and that the formal HTML committees will
> be forced to go along with whatever Netscape does.  I know almost nobody
> who is writing HTML-3 -- almost everyone I know writes Netscape.  I am on
> the content committee of the Washington Software Association -- and I am
> not sure how strongly to voice my "opinion" that using <center> is not as
> good an idea as using <p align="center">! 

I agree with Steve. 

I think the stadards people are doing their best, which by nature means
being slowish and considered.  However many of the commercial forces are
now almost vicious in their attempts to crush the standards process by
making "extensions". 

Netscape is an absolute travesty as regards HTML --- since its release, it
has defined a future market for itself simply by supplementing HTML. Even
if a glossier, faster, more featureful browser comes out in the future, it
will be forced to catch up with the moving target of Netscape's HTML
extensions. 

Once upon a time, some people (including myself to an extent) thought of
Mosaic as the enemy of standardised, well-considered HTML --- compared to
Netscape, Mosaic is a beautiful example of how to properly implement a
standard. 

I certainly don't think we should give up though :) World-Wide Web
protocols and formats are too important to be left to a few commercial 
concerns to rip apart. 

Liam
--
 Liam Relihan,                                        Voice: +353-61-335322
 CSIS, Schumann Building,        [space]                Fax: +353-61-330876
 University Of Limerick,                             E-mail: relihanl@ul.ie
 Ireland.                      http://itdsrv1.ul.ie/PERSONNEL/lrelihan.html

Received on Thursday, 27 July 1995 05:58:12 UTC