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This topic was split from the Quirks Mode [webmasterworld.com] discussion - it deserves its own thread.
.....but raises another question.
WHERE exactly is the future?
Insofar as I can see, standardising html and associated coding would be a welcome gesture and give us a one-size-fits-all headache-avoiding answer to a long standing problem, yet it is an exercise in futility, because if a standard is adopted then every browser would have to do the same thing and support every definition equally which would make every browser the same. What would be the point in rival browsers if they all accept the same standard?
Not an arguement against, I'd just like to see thoughts.
[edited by: tedster at 8:21 am (utc) on May 31, 2004]
Broadcast signal standards did not signal the end of innovation in radio and television design. So I don't think that the evolution to standards will hurt the important innovations. Besides, browser developers are involved with the W3C, so I doubt that any important ideas will be ignored.
But that's just me - how about other opinions?
Browsers can compete with things like:
* customizability (?) of layout (skins, toolbars)
* integration into the desktop
* integration with office packages
* rendering speed
* security/vulnerability
* search options
* integration of plugins (just look at the current video plugin jungle)
* filtering for specific groups (ie children)
Backwards compatibility is another important feature not to forget. There are many pages out there made long before anybody cared about standards...
The current dominant browser has undergone no radical changes for about half a decade; there have been incremental improvements to rendering, and tiny changes to the user interface, but the product is substantially the same as it has in the heyday of Netscape 4.
Other browsers have gone on to improve their interfaces. We have tabbed browsing, skinnable user interfaces, suites, standalones, extensions, filters and all kinds of technical tweaks that allow us greater freedom than ever before to customize our browsing environment.
Customers, it seems, either don't want these things, or don't realize that they exist, for IE's market share remains undiminished at around 90 - 95%.
So what do they want? In my experience, the most common complaint of a non-technical user coming to a new browser is that "my website doesn't look right". What they want, almost exclusively, is consistent rendering and behaviour. Pop-up blockers, skins, mouse gestures, chat windows and amazon plugins are nice to have, it seems, but it doesn't take much to put off the average user:
Recent Discussion on MozillaZine
Guest: I have embedded bgsound src but cannot hear it, is it because Firefox does not recognize the HTML or am I missing someting?Support #1: bgsound = Microsoft only tag. Follow W3C standards to be compatible with most browsers.
Support #2: this is by design. bgsound isn't supported, and never will be supported.
Guest: OK..........then I guess it's useless for me.............
I cant use Embed src on my Community board................
Thanks............back to IE I go............
Customers want standards. Unfortunately, the defacto standard is literally impossible to duplicate in all aspects. Do we attempt to duplicate this, and be forever led by a browser that hasn't changed (and isn't likely to change) in years?
It seems to me that the only path we can follow, and the path that will not only force innovation but also give customers what they want, is to match an open standard, developed by agreement and consensus, that is continuously evolving and improving.
Customers, it seems, either don't want these things, or don't realize that they exist, for IE's market share remains undiminished at around 90 - 95%.
This figure of 90-95% (or even 95%+) keeps being bandied around, and I'm not sure why. At their height IE users only numbered about 80% of my site's visitors, and the proportion has fallen to less than 70% and declining (slowly).
Most people, of copurse, don't understand what a browser is, and probably don't care. They just look at web pages. I suspect that there are some people who, on reading one of those stupid "upgrade your browser" messages, think that it means "get a more expensive modem".
On the other hand, institutions have IT support departments who do understand these things, and they are introducing other browsers - mainly Mozilla, occasionaly Opera.
And, as far as individual users are concerned, as and when they become aware of other browsers, they tend to move away from IE. This happens slowly, and only with a minority of users.
Bottom line is that users of IE6 and earlier IE browsers are going to be a major segment of the user-base for a long time to come, but that other, standards-compliant, browsers will be equally, if not more, important.
This division isn't going to promote innovation. As asquithea notes, it actually holds it back.
For example, many designers are frightened of using CSS techniques that don't work on IE6. I was one of them, until I realised that I was failing to make my site as readable as it could be for the 20% of visitors who use Mozilla. This proportion is growing. So I decided that I would treat IE users in the same manner as I previously treated NN4 users - important, but not the defining group of users as far as technology is concerned.
But of course, this problem would never have existed for me - or others - if IE6 had been propoerly standards-compliant.
So what do they want? In my experience, the most common complaint of a non-technical user coming to a new browser is that "my website doesn't look right". What they want, almost exclusively, is consistent rendering and behaviour. Pop-up blockers, skins, mouse gestures, chat windows and amazon plugins are nice to have, it seems, but it doesn't take much to put off the average user:
What I'm getting at is that users get frustrated by exactly the same end-problems that irritate us as web-developers. They don't know or care about all the different rendering technologies -- they want things to "just work". Moreover, there is a commerical reliance on stability that didn't exist in the early days of HTML. Only if all major browsers support open standards can we hope to move on from the status quo and begin to embrace interesting new techniques.
On the news that my wife is to have our first child we wanted to tell all our friends, many from our University days and naturally as is the way of the world these days we dug out the email addresses that we had written down on scraps of paper over the past few years whenever we met up at weddings and other social gatherings.
With my artistic flair, I put together a site with a smattering of eye candy (modest, not overdone) that our friends could visit for news and other stuff. Until this point, I by and large ignored css because of the very reason that someone has already mentioned: there is no standardisation in cross browser use of the tools of our trade.
However, I decided to give it a try as an alternative to tables and was blown away by just how easy it was. In fact I found myself wondering why I had ignored it so long.
Then I started getting emails mentioning display problems and I downloaded netscape 7.
To my horror, the clean and functional layout was a complete mess. I knew there would be discrepancies, but I never expect it so badly. My javascripts needed tweaked, my css layouts required redifining.
I wondered what the point was. Why on earth, ten years after the peak of the netscape/IE war are we still suffering the same problems we always have. Why do we STILL have to do dual format layouts in the hope of pleasing everyone?
We have w3c popping out standards which ie bends to its will and distorts to its own end. This has given us the ability to do such things as funky colors on our scrollbars and such like which are good, useful cosmetic tools, and as anyone with marketing and advertising will tell you, careful use of colour is a very powerful tool.
Yet, for all that it is useful, it is not a standard. Because it is not a standard, it is not cross browser compatible. And the same can be said of Javascript. It is the same language, yet browsers interpret it differently. Sometimes I think browsers are nothing more than a Rorschach inkblot test where you show it to one browser and it sees a butterfly, and show it to another it sees fluffy clouds.
Which leaves you and me in the middle shouting "Look! It's just an inkblot. OK?"
When all is said and done tho, I suppose, as someone else has said, browsers will always be driven by innovation and WILL drive innovation. But why does this need to be at the price where clean scripting suitable for all comes at the sacrafice of removing a "position:absolute;" here and a javascript there. Today I have taken a 5 year backward step and did two seperate pages for two different browsers. For all that the industry standards have changed and evolved, they have stayed exactly the same.
Today I have taken a 5 year backward step and did two seperate pages for two different browsers. For all that the industry standards have changed and evolved, they have stayed exactly the same.
