Need Help On An Assignment!

[macca031]

hey

im currently doing a course called Applications and Implications of computing at Univeristy

the following question has been set and i cannot figure out how to do it:

MicroSoft has added various extensions to the HTML standard that are interpreted by MicroSoft Explorer. What are the advantages and disadvantages in doing this to MicroSoft and to users? Does this represent a competitor to XML?

anybody got any ideas?

cheers for any help

macca

[divaone]

try here for one such file extension (hta)
http,//msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/author/hta/overview/htaoverview.asp

hth

[shasan]

Not sure if it represents a competitor to XML, since XML is used a lot for data transfer actually behind the presentation layer (HTML layer).

I don't think any browser supported file extension can threaten XML in that regard. You can have a whole bunch of XML being used to make two disparate systems transfer data back and forth, and then present the data completely in HTML. It's on a completely different layer.

[shasan]

Oh and one more thing. Regardless of the file extension, an HTML file is seen as an HTML file judging by the code it contains. i.e. I could have a file extension .php or .cgi or .pl or .asp or .jsp or whatever, but if the file contains HTML code, it is interpreted the same way.

So when it comes down to file extensions, I think they're largely irrelevant.

People start to worry when Microsoft starts to add/substract from the HTML standard itself (it's actually a 'recommendation' strictly speaking, not a 'standard') by supporting extra code, or not supporting some behavious as recommended by W3C, thereby undermining the 'standardness' of the 'standard'. The power that Microsoft has is that whatever it uses can BECOME the de facto 'standard'.

People here can correct me if I'm wrong.

[willybfriendly]

Proprietary markup, such as Micro$oft supports, if widely used will encourage/force users to use M$ products.

Advantage to M$ - $$$$
Disadvantage to M$ - anti-trust actions?

Advantage to users - none
Disadvantage to users - lose freedom to choose. Faulty rendering of sites using non-standard code. (Actually, a standards compliant browser will render correctly, but this doesn't mean that it will look like what the author thought it would.)

But that's OK, since IE displays faulty rendering of sites using standards compliant code.

WBF

[shasan]

hehe, willy, macca didn't ask you to DO the assignment for him :) j/k.