The Problem with Standards

2004-06-21

I pushed a button with me when I read unreasoned stuff like this article Why You Should Dump Internet Explorer

There's 2 ways to look at the standards issue. The one the article sees, the other is through the eyes of innovation. Should we not try to find alternative fuel sources because gasoline is the standard? Should we all be stuck with vinyl records because they were the standard instead of the new CDs and MP3s?

IE supports a zillion features that Netscape didn't (and may still not). Even if they do support them now it took them until just recently to catch up.

Here's a few from IE4.0 AKAIK Netscape did not support innovations like this.

A Flash like Pumpkin editor in DHTML

Asteroids in DHTML

Flash like animation in DHTML

Real time 3D in DHTML

Real time image and text filters in DHTML

http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie40/demos/pick3.html">More real time 3D in DHTML

There are hundreds of others. Probably the most useful has been the WYSIWYG editors for many sites that for the longest time were not available on other browsers because they lacked the innovation to add them or by decision decided to wait for standards that still don't exist!

I'm stick of hearing the "support standards" BS. Think it through people!!! It's not as simple as just saying "stick to standards". If everyone stuck to standards we'd still be in the stone ages.

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