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Web Standards Project: Upgrade, Or Miss Out
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Feb 17, 2001 06:50 PM
from the progress-or-tyranny? dept.
from the progress-or-tyranny? dept.
DShadow writes: "The Web Standards Project launched yesterday a Browser Upgrade Campaign. They feel that the Web is being held back by users who use older versions of browsers. Their solution is twofold. First, they are asking web developers to drop support for old (pre- IE5.5/NS6/Opera5) browsers and code only using the most recent standards. Secondly, they are asking developers to add a bit of JavaScript to web pages that forces browsers to redirect to the a WSP page explaining this. Now, I'm all for using modern technology and phasing out support for the old stuff, but to say that I'd be annoyed when websites start telling me to go away and upgrade my browser (Netscape 4.6) because they don't want to support it would be an understatement. I'll upgrade when I'm ready to, and not a moment sooner." It took me a few reads to realize that they're serious.
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Web Standards Project: Upgrade, Or Miss Out
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This reminds me... (Score:5)
We've upped our standards, so up yours.
Web Standards (Score:3)
Still, it is a pain to make your pages look good on Netscape 4.x. Their spotty implementation of CSS and other small bugs have always been an irritation to me.
As I said, though, this is definatly not the way.
Re:This reminds me... (Score:3)
You mention that they can't upgrade their systems for *gasp* 3 years. A phenominal amount of time nowadays, especially in the computer industry. Those poor, oppressed, Katzian children, trying to geek on such old, depreciated systems. (Something must be done to fight the oppresion of geeks! Brothers, take arms!)
You also mention a bastardized form of software you call "Windows 95" (who in their right mind still runs this thing? Even Win98 beats the tar out of it, in pretty much every category.) How you would A) get ahold of such software - since it isn't exactly readily available - and B) pay for such software - after all, you have no funds - is beyond even the keenest logic. Of course, you wouldn't simply copy a single original disk. That's horridly immoral - everyone knows software has to be paid through the rear for.
Also, I'm relatively sure that your comparision of the modern distro to 6 year old software is humorous at best, but most likely akin to a pickup truck full of horse apples. Actually, I'll bet on it. But onto what I was saying.
Comparing a recent version of Redhat, SuSE (or whatever those Germans call it), or Mandrake to Windows 95 is nuts. It's more easily compared to Windows 2000 in all categories, namely due to the fermentation and it's year of origin, but also due to stability and code maturity. You'd be best to compare, what, RedHat 4.2? I don't even know what came out at that time. Take that, slap in a basic browser such as Netscape or maybe even Mozilla, and let it be. I've seen it work before on 'such horribly slow systems' before, for months on end. There's one such box on my campus that I know of.
As far as whe whole situation of 'standard browsers'... dude, that kind of drug abuse isn't good for your health. As a matter of fact, it's quite bad, and quite comparable to electocutional shock. You do realize, don't you, that MS IE symbolizes everything that is Bad and Wrong? This, of course, symbolizes everything that is NonStandard and ALoadOfHorseApples. This whole deal wreaks of a potential MS sponsorship or funding of the WSB in exchange for some one-ups or various other perverse favors.
When I'm right, I'm right.
-------
CAIMLAS
Re:I don't care about users (Score:3)
And if you have to check for browser version and provide different code for different browsers, find another way to do what you want, or don't do it at all.
Some of us aren't interested in investing in the new hardware needed for the latest browser software, but that doesn't mean we aren't exactly your market demographic...
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Browser makers got us here (Score:3)
Yep, I know. The only problem is that people complain if browser makers add too many extraneous features. The MacIE team sort of split the difference by revamping the UI and making it more customizable. That got people downloading, whereas a rewritten rendering engine alone would not.
The UI is important stuff, and at this time I don't know of another browser that replaces NS 4.x to a reasonable extent.
I suppose this is a matter of opinion as I really don't like it much at all. There might be a little less choice on the Unix side of the world, but from what I can tell, IE, Opera, and the Gecko-based browsers look pretty reasonable for Windows users. Personally, I'm on OSX, and IE5 fits my needs nicely, and had some of the best standards support around.
Clean efficient browsers are needed BEFORE designers can take advantage of these new tools, not the other way around.
So, do you feel it is more important to have a "clean efficient" browser (which I assume means strong on standards, low on frills), or compelling features to get people to download, as you mention above? Either way, we can't really afford to wait around any longer. Either we push W3C standards now, or sit by and watch Microsoft take over with Active*.
Yes, CSS has been around a while. XML is just now getting itself solidified. Thing is though, nobody, and I mean nobody, has been able to produce a web browser that is 100% compliant with all that encompasses CSS1 and CSS2.
CSS2 really isn't that big of an issue right now. I'd settle for CSS1. MacIE5 was probably the first shipping browser to do 100% of CSS1, and Mozilla is probably right there as well. I don't know much about Opera, but hear it's good.
Is full compliance with CSS even possible? There's been a lot of folks throwing in a ton of time trying to get there, yet nobody is.
Yes, MacIE5 did 100% of CSS1, HTML4 and PNG. This was all over the web.
[HTML 3.x is heavy on inline commands to achieve formatting. This is totally backwards.] Yes it is, but it totally worked.
You and I must have been working with different browsers.
I found myself constantly battling to get things to work the way they were supposed to, especially anything in terms of alignment. And in the end, you had a very clunky, difficult to maintain page. CSSP elminates many of these issues.
It really should be the browsers leading the way, with designers following. The other way around is simply a chaotic mess.
I could not possibly disagree with this more. It was the browser makers that forked DHTML and created their own proprietary standards that caused all the nightmares we've had to endure over the past several years. The fact that some sites require IE is a direct result of this.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu [wildtofu.com]
I don't care (Score:5)
Exactly.
I don't care...
I DO care about your message.
I want to hear what you have to say. By all means, spend a few moments on making it look nice. But there is really something wrong if you spend more time on "style" than the actual substance.
Tables are great. They help my browser format large amounts of information so that I can understand your data. But please don't use dozens of nested tables just to make some graphic show up at exactly coordinate x, y.
Graphics can help your site make sense and help me to understand your message and naviate easier. But please don't pollute my browser with hundreds of micro-images just to achieve some special effect that could be replaced with a simple navigation bar on the side.
Most of all, if you respect me (the viewer), with clean and useful content, I will respect you for the effort you have spent in creating it.
Netscape 4.76? (Score:5)
I personally don't have the constant lock up problems I keep hearing folks complain about. I personally support around 40-50 installations of NS 4.76 at my company, and the darn thing works. To date, it still has the best E-mail client I've used on any platform, and it certainly has the best LDAP integration at there.
Yeah, IE is faster at rendering pages with gobs of emedded tables. So? NS 4.76 still processes JavaScript faster than anything else I've tested, and the right-click menus are noticeably faster. Other than ActiveX security updates, I honestly don't have a reason to move my browsing to IE, or any other browser for that matter.
Even Mozilla, right up to last night's build, doesn't perform any faster for me where it counts, at the UI level. Again, some of the heavy table pages show up a wee bit faster, but no where near a level to compensate for a far slower UI. Oh god, and don't get me started on the mail client.
How about getting us end user types a browser that has a really sweet and fast UI that'd cause us to actually want to upgrade? This strong arming us from the top down makes the web weaker, not stronger. Dreaming up standards faster than developers can implement them is just plain annoying. How about let's all get HTML 3.0 done correctly across browsers and platforms, THEN worry about the wonders of CSS and XML? How about getting JavaScript to actually work 100% across every browser at the version it's at now? We ain't even there yet, and these folks are worried about CSS? Ack!
"This page is not viewable because you need to upgrade to IE or die! Don't like IE? Go buy another 256meg of RAM and run NS 6.0!"
Re:Stop to consider... (Score:4)
This is one of the real problems with the current system. The more you have to tweak your site just so it'll work in NS4.x, NS3.x, IE3 and IE4, the less inclined you are to do the work that will also make it viewable in non-traditional browsers, screen readers and handhelds. If people used standards-compliant browsers, then the effort now put into supporting 5 different browsers, could instead be put into supporting 5 different modes of viewing.
Charles Miller
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not gonna happen (Score:3)
Also, no web development firm is going insist on using new browser standards when the competition knows the client's ceo want's to have the page work in the widest selection of browsers possible.
I'm not tooting my horn here. This part of the discover phase of web application development in the industry today, and as long as it remains so, we're going to be laying out pages in tables and clear spacer gif's. We're lucky we were able to sneak css text control past the clients, seeing as how it doesn't work in version 3 browsers. The only reason we cant use css-p is because the AOL browser chokes on it.
AOL's web developer documentation even has the guts to say that we may as well "sacrifice" new technology for the greater good.
Talk about pushing a boulder of cruft up a mountain as your day to day existence. I've found some HTML sites that I've worked on to be harder than keeping 7 dimensional arrays in my brain. It's all because we've learned to write code to break consistently, instead of working.
And it isn't going to change, no matter how hard we try. Our clients just won't go for it. They're willing to pay money for crap technology everybody can see, and aren't willing to pay LESS for good technology that the user would have to install additional software to see. They know the customer/user would rather use some other site.
Re:I don't care about users (Score:5)
The web is about _lots_ of things, and to say something as sweeping as the above proves you don't understand that yet.
I'm a web interface designer/developer, and thus am _really_ picky about how things appear. It's often quite difficult to organize content and design interfaces to complex content. Most sites don't get it right - heck, most don't even come close! One of my mottos is, "If someone can't _find_ what they're looking for, it might as well not even _be_ there." There is a place on the web for both style as well as substance. You could put the best novel in the world online, but if you make all the text blink, it won't matter. _Think_ about that! People avoid sites with lots of crap, despite how good the content may be - simply because the other stuff is too irritating. It's not necessarily that there's too much 'technology' (ie: javascript, popup windows, etc.), it's that it's not DESIGNED properly. Some content lends itself to simple layout - all text, perhaps, single column, whatever. Some content does NOT (no matter what your personal opinion is, I'm sticking to this). Frames are not only somtimes appropriate, they're sometimes the ONLY _good_ way to present some content (generally navigation, though). Just because you've been subjected to evil web site design using frames or javascript or popup windows (as have we all), that doesn't make such things bad. Those things are just tools - neither good nor evil. I certainly like having the option to use such thing when I feel they're appropriate.
I've seen some _fantastically_ artistic presentations done via Flash - which many SlashDot snobs dismiss out of hand. I've seen things that simply couldn't be done without Flash. Sure, someday some of the upcoming vector and SMIL stuff will likely make that possible without Flash, but it ain't here, yet, so stop bitching about Flash. Instead, bitch about Macromedia not properly (not even REMOTELY properly) supporting non Win and Mac platforms. And where's the Flash program itself for Linux? Nowhere. Ugh. Nevertheless, the technology is here, and can be quite cool.
Anyone developing a website has to make many choices, not the least of which is, "How many people, and WHICH people, am I targeting this to?" Does it make sense to not be able to, or to have to dumb-down, your content to be able to reach more people? Many artists in non-web fields would answer that with a resounding "No!", so why should artistic expression on the web be any different? Just because a small percentage of people think so? The artist is the only person qualified to determine what is the 'proper' method of expressing their vision, be it text or audio or visual. Deal with it.
In a related vein, my opinion is that if content really WAS king for most people, the web would be vastly different than it is now, and people would be more willing to pay for quality content. I'd certainly be willing to pay a small fee for monthly local movie listings, for example, if they listed EVERY local movie theatre, and listed them correctly and reliably. Unfortunately, moviefone.com and citysearch.com both have similar such problems.
All of this is, of course, an opinion, just like yours.
Re:Web Standards (Score:3)
Obviously, a commercial site that expected to get every kind of user is going to have to break their back to make sure they support as many browser versions as practicable, while maintaining a sophisticated interface.
But I don't see what the problem here really is at the top end: just generate your pages from a database and stick the content into a template for the browser/platform in question. What's the big deal? If it matters, you can do it. Was it supposed to be easy, too?
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Some PHB's just don't care anyway... (Score:3)
Blank page.
As it turns out, the JavaScript code checked for IE or NS on MacPPC or Win32. If you run NS on BSD/OS, they don't want to do business with you. Neither do they care about Amiga, Mac68K, Linux, WAP phones, well, anything they never heard of...
Every three months they change the website, and every time I run into this, I point it out to them (at first to the webmasters, later to their PHB's). They usually fix it a few days after I report it, but they invariably screw it up when they bring a new site online and they fail to see that it's the kewl scripting that's the problem, not my browser.
I don't care how the site looks. I want to buy an airline ticket. This concept is one I have not been able to get across, and they will not acknowledge it's their problem. Sometimes I can vote with my feet, sometimes I can't: that's my biggest frustration.
I agree. This is a new level of bastardry! (Score:5)
I've seen a lot of standards written, and rewritten, and rewritten, with never a fully-compliant implementation. No standards-body should ever release a standard without a fully-functional reference implementation; otherwise, the natural ambiguity of human language will always leave doubts about what is and isn't compliant. Standards are mostly useful when everyone who is expected to follow them has a part in making them (i.e. such as if all memory manufacturers get together and agree to make standard interchangeable chips); this is impractical for something like the WWW.
The WWW was defined by the first web-browsers. There has, in fact, been no truly useful addition to HTML since the first few years of development. It has only had gobs of useless and annoying eye-candy piled on top of (obscuring and interfering with) the content and navigation.
Every new browser worth mentioning still works with this original core functionality. This is the defacto standard
Defacto standards compliance:
-it works in every major version of IE and Netscape
-you can navigate with images turned off
-it works with Java turned off
-it works with Javascript turned off
-it works in Lynx
It's not hard to make a web page that everybody can use. Avoiding all the new features will generally make a better, less frustrating interface, too.
That's the problem: it's very easy to write good HTML. "Web designers" like to pretend that it's hard, that's what gives them a career. They sell flashy, expensive garbage that looks good to a manager viewing a local copy for the first five minutes. That's where the majority of the profit is, anyway. There's certainly a need for navigational interface designers and back-end programmers, but they hardly care about HTML features.
So let's turn the tables. Everybody use Lynx!
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Re:Can you imagine how the PHBs would react? (Score:4)
If it's netscape 4 on Win32 or Unix do X
If it's netscpae 4 on mac do this
If it's netscape 6/ Gecko do this
If it's IE do this
etc
This was a real pain in the ass to write but...
Hint: you can remove the "if it's ns6/gecko" section since you browser would have already crashed if you are using mozilla.
Great! Now make it possible... (Score:5)
Stop to consider... (Score:5)
Second, JavaScript is a _bad_ idea. A quick check reveals that the percentage of users not using Javascript at all was 20% in 2000, up from 14% in 1999. This is of course due to pop-ups and to the irritating habit of overriding user preferences that we all know and love, but also because it is more and more common for companies to filter out javascript at their firewalls.
I understand the reasoning behind their concerns, but as a practical matter, many web sites do _not_ wish to alienate more users than they have to (though some obviously does not understand this).
/Janne
backwards compatibility.. a MUST (Score:4)
now comes a campaign to rid the world of this important compatibility factor so a bunch of WYSIWYG web designers can whip up dirty broken code that everyone can see as they wish it to be, while invalidating millions of users with valid standards-following browsers. the web was not designed to be a TV set, but a useful way of linking resources together. anyway I've said enough..
Can you imagine how the PHBs would react? (Score:5)
If it's netscape 4 on Win32 or Unix do X
If it's netscpae 4 on mac do this
If it's netscape 6/ Gecko do this
If it's IE do this
etc
This was a real pain in the ass to write but it needed to be done some some funky tables our designer came up with looked right. Turned out to be a really cool looking site. I can't imagine turning to my PHB and saying, "This person is using Netscape 4, we're not going to sell them anything". I would have been fired sooo fast.
I don't care about users (Score:4)
Re:Stop to consider... (Score:3)
It does mean that support for the old, buggy, non-standard shit is reduced. Good news all round, IMO.
concern over non-mainstream browsers (Score:3)
I'm pleased to notice that the proposed methods of browser detection and redirection actually utilize modern functions and see if they work -- sort of like <NOFRAMES>. So, first of all, obscure but modern browsers will "just work". And perhaps more importantly, older browsers (and special-purpose ones, like text-speech) could transparently be redirected to pages designed for that technology level.
As a compromise between users who want to stick with their old browsers and designers who don't want all of their time stuck in a quagmire of old-browser esoterica, I'd suggest that the redirection page should be a plain-text version of the content, with a footnote note that compliance with certain standards is required to view the fancy web page.
This is less heavy-handed than just pushing people away, and yet still gets the message out -- and doesn't take nearly as much time as it would to generate a distinct complete HTML site.
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Nothing wrong with my current browser. (Score:3)
So I'll use whatever browser I damn well please.
-Restil
restil@alignment.net
Rejecting _bad_ browsers (Score:5)
The original goal of Web and HTML was to be platform neutral - now I'm being told that I need one of the approved browsers in order to sites.
The point wasn't to reject all browsers but a select few. The point was to reject a few bad browsers (read IE 4 for Windows and Netscape 4.x) that are known not to conform to standards, known not to degrade gracefully when presented with content they don't recognize, known not to be accessible to the physically challenged, and known not to be fixable by the community.
I use conforming HTML 4 on my own pages and see no reason why I should have to support user agents that don't handle conforming HTML in a "nice" way.
If you're running Netscape 4, upgrade to Mozilla 0.8. Now.
All your hallucinogen [pineight.com] are belong to us.
Screw these guys! (Score:3)
I like C++. It's great. But if I have a project that doesn't need objects or templates, then I'll use just plain vanilla C. Likewise, if I don't need any HTML-4.0 constructs, I won't use them, and resort to HTML-3.2 instead.
And I'm certainly not going to put in any ECMAScript telling the user that I disapprove of their personal choice of web browser!
Re:Great! Now make it possible... (Score:3)
Recent builds have very good performance, too. Takes 10 seconds to start up, but once it's running it's pretty snappy.
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Too Subjective, But Revolutions Usually Are (Score:3)
Now, I'm a professional website developer, and I have my fair share of frustration in building websites that are generally accepted as "standards compliant" but that can't be rendered properly by many people (sometimes even our clients, on their own machines).
But, the approach of these folks seems too harsh and too subjective. They're basically saying that "our desire to use standards is supremely more important than your [lack of technical experience | shortage of time | computer's limitations | appreciation for simplicity. ]"
It's not that these things can't be overcome in time - they can, and they are being overcome. But to suggest that, starting right now, someone shouldn't be able to look at a website with whatever client software they want is akin, in my mind, to saying they shouldn't be able to publish on the web unless they adhere to a certain set of guidelines. That's scary.
Doubt it will happen (Score:5)
Re:This reminds me... (Score:5)
I worked for a company who donated my time help a school get online. I rounded up every machine and took stock in them- they were all Dell 486/33 Slimline machines. They had no room for expansion, no real upgrade options - and the school is 3 years from being able to replace them.
So the first thing is I got a bunch of PCI network cards donated. That helped bunches, of course.
Next I got a big Linksys hub donated, and that helped. After my company wired two labs and all the class rooms, I started playing with the actual boxes.
They had 250 Mb hard drives, 32 Mb of RAM, 1 Mb onboard video, and 14" monitors. I worked with various distros, finally choosing Debian (Mandrake and SuSe wouldnt even run due to Pentium optimizations).
After 2 solid weeks of tweaking, I couldt get any combo with Netsacpe 4.x and X11 working with any decently usuable performance. I tried "downgrading" to the original version of NS 3, but still, it was sad. Mozilla, took minutes to load and minutes to draw a simple page.
Finally I thought that maybe Windows 95 would work. I installed the orignal version, patched it with all the new fixes from Windows Update, and then installed IE 5.5.
I was surpised at how much better it ran than X11/Netscape. The boxes are usuable as browsing stations and to access the school's web-enabled card-catalog and refence guides. I setup a nifty donated box to run Linux and do NAT on the DSL line, plus run a webmail server, and now the school is crusing without much troble.
But what sucked is that we had to use a Windows environment on these machines. I locked them down as tight as possible, and they are pretty much useless except for browsing and email, but that is better than what they had before (no internet, no money, no wiring). Linux/X11/Netscape really sucked on these machines. The video was slow, network activity was slow, and browsing almost not worth the effort. The machines performed much better using the Windows 95/IE 5.5 setup.
The sad fact is, that Mozilla will likely be either #1, or #2 for compatibility, but schools and people who could benefit from the freeness of it won't because of its footprint, speed, and size on slow older machines. This plan to upgrade people's browsers will lead older users to favor IE - IE will run on a 486, and on alow end Pentium (100, 133, 166) compare it to Mozilla or even Opera. IE is the only usuable one of the bunch - and its memory and space requirements are minimal.
So whats the deal here? I know I could have used a text browser, but what good is that for students wanting to visit online galleries and encyclopedia's? And this new push to force upgrades, what can people with older boxes do. The Mozilla engine (yes, I tried Galeon) is a pig, and people with older machines can't swing its requirements. This leaves them with being forced off the net or away from mainstream sites - or to turn to IE.
I love Mozilla, but even on my various PII and K62/350 boxes its a dog. Hence, I post this very message using IE 5.5
this will never be used (Score:5)
Think of it...
You're a website owner/designer who wants to get as many people to see your site as you possibly can (so that they then go on and buy stuff/click on banners/laugh at your jokes/post first).
Someone comes to you and says, "Listen Mr Webmaster, we're sick and tired of people not cooperating. Put some scripting into your page which makes your customers disappear if they have the temerity to not want to see sites as your designers dream of making and persist in not wanting to spend a couple of hours downloading our new bloat"
and you say,
"No, bollocks, I want as many people as possible to see my page/buy my books/read my posts, and if my designers can't be arsed to make a page that the biggest possible audience can see, then that's my problem. It's nothing to do with my customers."
Imagine a bookshop not letting you buy their books until you'd completed a literature degree. Do you think people would go to another store?
Do you know of any sites where the same content CANNOT be found elsewhere?
Do you think these sites are going to make it actively difficult for potential customers to come and see their stuff?
nope. didn't think so.
sites are broken, not browsers (Score:4)
People have lots of legitimate reasons for not upgrading. Their hardware may not support it. They may not be able to pay for it. They may be on a slow connection or wireless device. And they may need special accessibility features.
Any web site that relies on the presence of the complex web features is broken. Sites should be able to render fine with no JavaScript, no DOM, no pixel-accurate positioning, and no graphics even. If they want to offer a graphically overburdened site in addition to a plain one, that's fine, but that should be an option.
Most old browsers are perfectly serviceable for rendering plain HTML and graphics. If someone with an old browser comes to a web site, the site should fall back to its plain version. It shouldn't complain or hassle the user.
Re:I don't care about users (Score:4)
You have obviously never heard of the field of typography. Yes, books are artistic. Type design (nevermind the layout design) is an entire field unto itself. Just because YOU don't notice it, doesn't mean there isn't any artistry there. One could claim that means it's been done well - it's not getting in the way. That actually makes my point.
Then there are the non-fiction, reference type books. Lots of design there - the table of contents, appendix, glossary, illustrations, and so forth. I've seen many an otherwise-great book get a thrashing in reviews for badly-done TOCs and appendices.
There is also artistry in writing. Well, there is if it's done well. I'm about to have my first article published in April (on Internet privacy), so I like to think that I know what I'm talking about!
Whether _most_ web pages exist to further artistic expression, or to communicate information, is not the point. Using proper design is KEY to communicating one's message - whether that message be informational only, or creative in some way. Proper design enhances that process. 'Artistry' doesn't mean lots of Flash and javascript pop-ups by default. I just want to have the option to use such technology.
Pop-up windows don't kill people - people kill people!
Re:Doubt it will happen (Score:4)
Now, if you want to password protect something, it's a Bad Idea, but for general purpose anonymous file distribution and retrieval, I don't think it's so bad. Keep It Simple, Stupid, I always say.
--
I remember when we had 300 baud, dummy terminals, and UUCP, and LIKED it.