Re: Standards, Work Groups, and Reality Checks: A Radical Proposal.

amanda@intercon.com
Sun, 24 Sep 95 18:27:12 EDT

> Personally, I don't think it is a matter of people not caring about the
> integrity of their HTML. Rather, I suspect it is a consequence of there
> being no easily usable tools to validate documents in way that provides
> for current tag extensions. [...] On the other hand, if browsers
> would offer validation services for these authors, I suspect most authors
> would take the time improve the integrity of their documents.

I have to disagree, based on the spectrum of discussions I've had with HTML
authors. The prevailing attitude is that HTML is valid if it produces the
output an author desires on the browser(s) the author uses. I have lost
count of the number of times I've sent a bug report to someone about the
HTML in one of their documents, only get a response on the order of "Hey,
Netscape displays it just fine, so **** off."

I interpret this as, indeed, "people not caring about the integrity of their
HTML."

What will be the key, I think, is if all of the major browsers (most notably
Netscape) simply stop displaying invalid HTML "just fine." This, in all
honesty, is my biggest beef with Netscape--featuritis is fine, I can compete
on the feature level. However, Netscape Navigator (and, to a lesser extent,
Mosaic and anything else based on the Mosaic parser) rewards people for
producing sloppy HTML. This is bad for everyone, *including* Netscape.

Luckily, Netscape seems to be realizing this, at least according to their
early press releases for 2.0. I can only hope...

Amanda Walker
InterCon Systems Corporation