Re: wine and IE

[Gary Turner <kk5st@sbcglobal.net>]

Colin Watson wrote:

>On Fri, Feb 21, 2003 at 06:34:35AM -0600, Gary Turner wrote:
<snip>
>> 
>> What is more reasonable, the shopkeeper cater to the customer --- or
>> vice versa?
>
>Not everybody developing for the web is a shopkeeper (thank God). If I'm
>not trying to sell something and therefore achieve Perfect Marketing Zen
>in the quest to do so, I honestly don't care if their rendering is a bit
>off due to them using a five-year-old browser; I'll write
>standards-compliant content - which means that browsers should be able
>to extract the information even if not all the formatting - and if the
>rendering doesn't look right then that's their problem.

Ah, Colin.  You misunderstand my point.  From an earlier post, except
for the Ego pages, web pages are the store fronts of e-commerce.  And,
commerce includes the exchange of ideas and information.  If you want
your stuff to be intelligible, you need to be aware of just how the
various browsers will render your page.  As a simple example, you may
compose a page of nested tables, simply because that seems the best way
to present your ideas.  Then take a look at the page with Lynx.  Or
check out a browser configured for very large font size.  Presentation
can be re-ordered into something totally illogical.  For anything other
than a simple page, some screwy things can happen to compliant code
rendered on compliant browsers.

>In general, people who think of the way pages are "intended to be seen"
>are missing the point of the web. Will your pixel-perfect design look
>the way you intended it to look on my PDA? The standards emphasize
>semantic markup, not physical markup, and leave the details of rendering
>up to the browser where they belong. CSS merely provides hints.

The graphic artists, or anyone coming from print seem to think they can
control the final look.  That may be the reason so many sites are
effectively IE only :(  The fact is that browsers render differently,
and are further affected by user preferences.  Since the final look is
*not* under the author's control, the author must test and rewrite until
the page at least looks ok regardless of browser.

To expect your customer (for ideas or goods or services) to change their
ways to suit your page is ridiculous.  
--
gt                  kk5st@sbcglobal.net
 If someone tells you---
 "I have a sense of humor, but that's not funny." 
                                  ---they don't.