JeffM wrote:
JeffM wrote:
The job of a Mozilla-compatible browser is to render **HTML**
pages. The crap in question IS NOT AN HTML PAGE--in HUNDREDS of
places.
That may be your narrow technical definition
The W3C gets to say what is HTML and what isn't. Over 400 times, they
say the page ISN'T HTML.
The "Académie achtémalaise"? Fine. It's not perfect HTML. Your solution
is to throw up your hands and refuse to play. I wonder how much market
share /that/ will get you.
How would you feel if you went into an auto dealer
and he proudly announced that his car only ran
on straight paved roads in the daytime?
Wrong analogy.
Better analogy:
You take your showroom-stock minivan
--which works just fine as a grocery-getter--
and enter it into the Baja 500. After you tear it all to hell,
you expect the dealership to fix it under warranty.
Who on earth is talking about repairs???
I know perfectly well that your showroom-stock minivan won't run in the
Baja 500. If I go down there, I'll take a tougher vehicle, one that will
take everything I can throw at it. It might be a bumpier ride, but I'll
still be running at the finish line.
But the vast majority of your end users -- like it or not --
are what you call "stupid people."
The job of Mozilla fanboys is NOT to advocate to break the browser
such that it will render any grade of crap;
it is to **educate** the ignorant as to the existance of that crap.
Who's advocating "breaking" it? Not me. I'm saying it should be able to
handle whatever crap real-world webmasters throw at it. That's
/toughening/ it, not sabotaging it.
This kind of arrogance is what got Apple consigned to a 10% niche
of the market
Apple has exactly the market they want.
...and by some figures, Linux's share exceeds Apple's.
All of that is a red herring. More on non-M$ environments below.
If measures of success are a red herring to you, I'm willing to bet
you're not very successful.
while Microsoft got rich on the other 90%.
M$ got their wealth illicitly
http://google.com/search?q=cache:w100CwTtO_MJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish+*-*-v-Microsoft-*-trial+and.the.Internet+Netscape+*-*-*-*-*-*-*-monopolize-a-*-category+text+*-not-*-*-*-*-*-*-part-of-the-standard+Java+*-*-competitors-that-do-not-*-*-support-the-*-extensions+*-*-Department-*-Justice+*-describe-Microsoft's-strategy
That topic is very much in keeping with this theme.
Unlike your Machiavellian advocacy,
that is NOT a model I want to emulate.
"Machiavellian"? I'm not saying we should connive to take over the
world. I'm saying we should build a better mousetrap. In some ways we
already are, and those features (e.g., security) are why I'm here. But
there's still room for improvement, unless we take the attitude that the
world should adapt to us.
...and if proper application of STANDARDS had been executed
(anti-trust enforcement by
US Congressional commitees, US FTC, US DoJ, EU regulators),
M$ would be just another face in the crowd.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and Al Gore should have been our president for the
last eight years, and Dick Cheney belongs at the end of a rope. I've got
enough wishes like that to support a whole army of beggars, each with
his own personal stable.
Pleasing customers is the only thing that will.
"The customer is always right" is crap.
Some customers are idiots.
Idiots especially aren't worth the effort. (See "Apple", above.)
Every market has a few idiots, and I've turned away a few horrendous
customers now and then myself. But if most of the market is "idiots,"
the problem is not with the market, it's with your attitude.
This also applies to *your* insistance on supporting non-standards.
I'm not insisting on /supporting/ non-standards. I'm saying we should
live in the real world, not whine about how imperfect it is and wish for
a fantasy world that will never come.
insulting me shows the bankruptcy of your argument.
Once someone ignores the core issue (STANDARDS),
the argument is over. All that is left at that point is ad hominem.
If you had a good argument, you wouldn't need to do that.
If you would quit evading the core issue,
I wouldn't need to do that.
I don't agree that it's the core issue. For me, success is the core
issue. Do we render pages well? Do we cope with whatever the real world
throws at us? Do we make our customers' lives easier, more pleasant,
more efficient? Or are we building a reputation as the browser that
wouldn't?
Too bad you don't understand the job of an HTML rending engine.
I actually understand the rendering engine's job
better than you give me credit for.
Not if you keep insisting that everyone does things the M$ way
and ignores W3C.
Once again, you put words in my mouth. I didn't say anything about doing
things the MS way, I didn't /insist/ that /everyone/ do anything.
HTML and the Internet community have evolved to the point where HTML
behaves like a natural language. No one person or body has control, and
no one can dictate (anymore) what dialects or forms or syntax everyone
uses. If millions of people pronounce the "t" in "often," that becomes
the standard, and no matter how much I hate it I have to recognize that
this is the way people speak the language. It would be silly of me to
pretend not to recognize the word whenever I heard the "t."
software isn't subject to such emotions;
it does whatever the programmers tell it to do without complaining.
The job of an HTML rendering engine is to render HTML.
What _you_ would like it to do is render NON-HTML
--and do it in the exact way that the junk product does.[1]
What _you_ would like to see is a race to the bottom
where all of the more-compliant browsers
behave like the bottom-of-the-barrel browser.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Acid3#Trident_-_Internet_Explorer
That's just silly--and it's NOT what's needed.
>>>
Don't put words in my mouth.
I think I echoed your view quite clearly: Do as The Borg does.
Nope. You created a straw man vaguely reminiscent of some of my views so
that you would have an easy target to demolish.
If I wanted crap I'd be using Internet Exploiter.
When they encounter a page that was MADE for Internet Exploder,
that is exactly what the users *should* be told.
They should also be told to complain--to the proper party.
Right. How many users do you think will take time out of their busy days
to complain about your technical issue when they can just as easily view
the page and get on with their lives?
The Internet was meant to be
a homogenous network with a heterogenous infrastructure.
That means it shouldn't matter whose stuff you run.
...then along came M$.
Anything they can't control entirely, they try to corrupt.
That's where we are--and pandering to M$'s goals is condoning evil.
There you go again with your pipe dreams about what the Internet
/should/ be.
The point of designing the Internet was to make it possible for
heterogeneous computers running heterogeneous software to talk to one
another. Perfection is not required for that, especially now that
software copes better and better with unexpected inputs. I don't write
English exactly the way you do, and I probably produce some sentences
you would consider ungrammatical, but we can still cope and we can still
(more or less) understand one another. Am I fatally flawed if I
understand something you say even though it doesn't comply perfectly
with my grammar? Or am I more successful for being able to cope with
such inputs?
The way you accomplish the homogenous network
is with STANDARDS.
As with any field, when the standards are ignored,
you end up with a giant glob of crap.
THAT is where these non-compliant sites come in.
I don't agree that the network needs to be homogeneous, except perhaps
at the very lowest (machine) level of bits and bytes.
What's needed is:
1) Get page builders to use the W3C Validator.
2) Get employers to use the Validator
**BEFORE** they pay for services.
3) Get the Acid4 test page built and _publicize_ that
to show even more what a piece of crap "the dominant player" is.
(If they can't even break 20 percent on Acid3,
what score do you think they'll get on Acid4?)
Nice dream, I like it. How do you plan to accomplish this?
See "educate", above.
Nice dream, I like it. How do you plan to accomplish this?
Keep in mind that the webmasters' customers are not HTML experts,
See "educate", above. See "Norway and Brazil", above.
Your advocacy of surrender is moving in the wrong direction.
I'm not advocating surrender, though of course you insist on seeing it
that way. It's not surrender to build a product that copes well no
matter what you throw at it. In the rest of the world, that's called
"success."
they're succeeding.
What they are doing is losing marketshare by the minute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Net_Applications_.282004_to_Present.29
The word is getting out.
See "educate", above.
See "users who CHOOSE not to use IE", above.
Why anyone would choose to emulate the methods
of the player whose stack is dwindling, I can't imagine.
They're losing market share because people are tired of the security
holes and they like some of the unique features we have to offer. They
could give a rat's ass about W3C compliance, that's not why they're
here. Go out there and ask them, you'll see. I'll bet they can't even
/spell/ "W3C."
--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
_______________________________________________
support-seamonkey mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
