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Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2004 5:33 pm
by llanitedave
johnperkins21 wrote:No. If you code to the current standard and it does not display properly on IE, too bad. If enough people stand up and fight for compliance and compatibility, Microsoft will have to change. As it is now, they get away with it because of your solution: hack your code until it works with IE. That's bs. IE should work with the current standards. It's not like they don't know about them, they just choose to ignore them because they can.

I do however understand if you're creating a site for a client, you have to code for IE. It is your responsibility to know which browswers support what. I just think that the standards are out there and if we continue to put up with browsers (esp. the most popular of the buch) not supporting the standards, what's the point of even having the w3c in the first place?
Don't most web designers create sites for clients? Even if Microsoft were to change tomorrow, there would still be a large number of legacy browsers out there that will constitute several years worth of income streams for your customers.

Customers aren't interested in standards wars, they are interested in *their* content appearing how *they* want it on *their* web site in whatever browser *their* viewers might care to use. You can't take your moral position on standards to the grocery store. You need to give your clients what they want if you want to get paid.

On the other hand, by knowing the strengths and weaknesses of browsers vs standards, you should be able to tell how easy it will be to implement, through standards, the customer's vision. With a little discretion you might be able to steer the customer away from asking for features that break standards, or charge more for those that do -- which is reasonable considering the extra labor it requires.

Do your standards crusading on your own dime, not on the customer's.

This is testing my patience and sadly, I seem to be failing.

Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2004 8:04 pm
by Brian
Unipus wrote:Brian, maybe you'd be much happier working in print?
That is wholly irrelevant to my points.
Unipus wrote:Otherwise, I fail to see what the point is of your rant.
I made no rant, but that you have repeatedly failed to understand my words is obvious. I thought I had stated my points plainly, but perhaps I have been mistaken.
Unipus wrote:That all browsers should all render all content identically? I'm sure they've never heard that before. It'll be fixed next week.
Your sardonicism is not amusing. I have been trying to participate in an intelligent discussion, but for whatever reason, you seem to be unwilling to allow it. This is both disappointing and taxing.

When I first read this thread, there was some debate about whether CSS was in fact implemented consistently between browsers. I confirmed that CSS is not implemented consistently and offered an exercise to prove it. My first post in this thread regarded the current state of the implementation of CSS standard support in Web browsers, period.

I do not deny that it is the job of paid Web developers to develop for any and all Web clients demanded by their customers--including those that do not conform to Web standards--but this obvious reality is irrelevant to the issues of whether Web clients should and do fully and properly support standards. Suppose that all browsers did in fact support all relevant standards. Would that invalidate the position that they should support those standards? No, so thus, the point stands on its own.

I find this exchange unnecessarily taxing. It demonstrates some of the worst things about Internet discussions. It is testing my patience and sadly, I seem to be failing.

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2004 2:28 am
by andre_c
Brian, I feel that your preaching to the choir, seems like you're trying to convince us that web browsers should stick to standards. Well, I think that anybody that has developed websites is already pretty convinced of that fact.

Bah.

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2004 4:17 am
by Brian
andre_c wrote:Brian, I feel that your preaching to the choir...
I am not preaching to anyone.
andre_c wrote:... seems like you're trying to convince us that web browsers should stick to standards.
Then perhaps you should read through this thread again. Or perhaps not; it has wasted far too much of people's time already.

Reading

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2004 4:30 am
by Brian
llanitedave wrote:
johnperkins21 wrote:... I do however understand if you're creating a site for a client, you have to code for IE...
... Do your standards crusading on your own dime, not on the customer's...
Did you even bother to read the post you quoted? If so, did you understand what it meant? Are you sure? If so, why have you given him an order that is irrelevant to his post (not that I think you should be giving him orders at all, of course)? He never said anything about standards "crusading" at the expense of a customer; nobody did. Before you accost someone about their post, perhaps you should read it well enough to understand it.

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2004 5:53 am
by patrikG
Unipus wrote:Brian, maybe you'd be much happier working in print? Otherwise, I fail to see what the point is of your rant. That all browsers should all render all content identically? I'm sure they've never heard that before. It'll be fixed next week.


To expand on Roja's example, it is YOUR JOB to know that if you do use those 24-bit PNGs, they aren't going to display for most of the audience unless you use the available hacks, tricks, and techniques to make it work on IE. It is YOUR JOB to know that those hacks and tricks exist and how they might be used. It is also YOUR JOB to know fairly precisely how much of your audience is going to be affected by any such decision, and to take that into account accordingly.
Nice discussion - starting from div vs tables to W3 standards and their, somewhat arbitrary, implementation. Let's keep it a discussion of the subject matter. Discarding a person's point of view because you disagree and becoming personal is not helpful and simply counterproductive.
This discussion, i.e. standards vs. usability, has been around ever since I first started creating webpages - and its not limited to CSS vs tables, but javascript, and even, back in the old days, simple HTML. One of my first projects was to write an online shop purely in javascript, cross-browser, mind you. Sever-side scripting was in its infancy, but the client-side discussion was the same.

MS sits on the various sub-boards of the W3 and thus has a big say in setting the standards, which IE does not adhere to. Numerous examples have been named here, regular expressions in IE would be just another one.

Hence, while IE actually claims to be supporting this, that and the other, and adhering to the W3 standards they helped set up, the fact is: IE doesn't. And why? Because they don't have to. About 90% of punters use IE to view webpages - so IE is the de-facto standard for most people, and MS naturally know that. What's the point of setting standards and then not adhering to them?

Sure, the short-term solution is: work with what's there because you have to - but at the same time: think about how things could and should be and work towards that.

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2004 3:55 pm
by Unipus
I thought this was an interesting conversation until it degenerated into a meta-conversation about which conversation it *isn't*. I'm more than happy to have a discussion of any sort about these issues, because they're important and frequently misunderstood. But rereading all of Brian's posts to date leads me to no conclusion whatsoever. You don't seem to be making any statement at all that isn't already agreed to (as andre_c said). Maybe everyone here has completely missed the point. I personally no longer see any point at all... the only message I can see you consistently expousing is basically "It's all hopeless," to which again the only response I have is "Maybe you'd be happier working in print."

Basically what I'm saying is that it's hard to have a discussion if you never elaborate a point beyond "you don't get my point" and it'd be nice if we were actually having a discussion here. As for points, my own:

* browsers DON'T all follow standards perfectly and/or the same, and probably never will
* if you work seriously in this business, it's your job to understand that fact and compensate for it
* designing for IE only is understandable in some business models, but I will never agree with it.
* support for CSS is generally just fine across all major browsers, to the point that it's certainly not out of the question to design entire sites using only CSS for layout.

Case in point: I do design and development work for a major reseller. Lately we've been approached repeatedly by search engine marketers and similar services. The last one of these people (who I hate talking to) who called me tried to walk me through their company webpage to show me a demo. Well guess what? It's totally broken in Firefox: the header showed up at 300% scale and nothing else displayed at all. I had no idea what I was looking at until I opened the same page in IE and saw what was happening. Well, guess what? These aren't "web professionals" that I feel particularly inclined to work with now.

Unipus

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2004 5:31 pm
by Brian
Unipus wrote:Basically what I'm saying is that it's hard to have a discussion if you never elaborate a point beyond "you don't get my point" and it'd be nice if we were actually having a discussion here.
I have elaborated, but you have repeatedly failed to understand, so what else can I do? Do you really want me to elaborate further? Okay, here goes: you seem needlessly insulting and belligerent. Further still? You seem to have poor reading skills. I do not wish to seem insulting myself, so I should clarify that these are honest observations, not baseless insults.

What must one do to convince or enable you to either participate in a civil, relevant manner or failing that, just leave?

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2004 7:32 pm
by Unipus
Well done. You seem to have a certain gift in calculated trolling that would do very well on some other boards I know. In any case, you're more than welcome to carry on this "conversation" without me however you like, as much as it pains me to sit on the sidelines at such an obviously groundbreaking time as this. Let me know if anyone ever figures out what you've been trying to say, okay?

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2004 8:11 pm
by m3mn0n
Locked.