Instead of freebsd.com, why not...

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Anthony
> Atkielski
> Sent: Monday, February 14, 2005 5:49 PM
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: Instead of freebsd.com, why not...
>
>
> Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC writes:
>
> > That is laughable.  MS IE on Windows has one of the worst reputations
> > around for following web standards.  Go ask any professional
> designer.
>
> I did better.  I actually ran the W3C conformance tests against MSIE,
> and it passed.  At the time, no other browser came close.
>

This isn't the problem with IE

Yes, IE does pass the conformance tests.  The problem isn't that, the
problem
is that not only does IE digest correctly written HTML and display it,
the
problem is that it ALSO digest IMPROPERLY written HTML and displays
whatever it damn well pleases.  In short, there's no way to know how
an incorrectly written HTML page will display on IE.  By contrast it's
easy
to know how an incorrectly written HTML page will display on Netscape -
it displays a blank page.

As a result of this, people that create web pages (and I am NOT polluting
the title 'web designer' by lumping every moron that writes a web page
into that group) and only look at them with IE usually end up making lots
of mistakes.  They fix these by layering on even more bandaids and
mistakes
until they get something somewhat resembling what they are after.  Is is
of course only displayable in IE.  Needless to say this is a VERY bad
thing
for the Internet because it undercuts the standards as it enables the
proliferation of websites that don't follow them.

By contrast the Netscape browser tends to reject bad HTML and displays
nothing.

And naturally what's sauce for the goose isn't sauce for the gander with
Microsoft - since the homepage for MSN is made sure by the MSN designers
to
be perfectly displayable on even older versions of Netscape, which are
the
most intolerant of bad HTML.

Whether or not IE really is failing compliance by doing this is
arguable - it
is pretty difficult to test for non-compliance when the way that the
browser
is non-compliant is because it is accepting incorrect HTML in addition to
correct HTML.  However web designers who are far more understanding of
this
have in fact created example web pages that display what some of the more
obvious problems are.

> Today, MSIE is not the only browser with good conformance, but it is
> still one of the best.

That depends on your definition of "best"

Ted