[PLUG] Will html 5 adoption end incompatibility woes for Linux users?

[Ghodechhap]

On Friday 11 March 2011 09:29:30 Gaurav Pant wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 8:07 AM, Ghodechhap <ghodechhap at ghodechhap.net> 
wrote:
> > On Thursday 10 March 2011 22:44:15 Mayuresh wrote:
> >> Not that the standards didn't exist before. But why do we have this era
> >> of "IE only" sites?
> > 
> > laziness.. lot of people do not realize(d) that "It works on my machine"
> > is a problem.
> 
> +1
> 
> other problem is people code for browser and not standards.
> Generally it is observed that a browser is considered to be a standard.

To be fair, there is no reference implementation of standard and lot of 
incompatibilities we see today are down to different interpretation of 
standard. However that does not help the marketplace.

To recap the history(correct me if I miss something)
- once upon a time, there was a single browser, mosaic, which was reference 
impl.

- multiple browsers appeared, following roughly same standard, IE being the 
most imp. other one.

- browser was thought to be a flagship product and one-upping the competition 
was essential, so html was extended with vendor specific tags.. blink is one 
example. Once one vendor did it, everybody is followed the practice in 
different direction.

- netscape was the most dominent browser but IE closed that advantage with 
bundling.

- IE become dominent and it stagnated.. developers have short memory and 
career lifespan.. so IE became the internet

- fundamental incompatibilities(IE specific dom model? hello...) and 
inabilities(onchange event for select/dropdowns) made sure that everybody had 
to code twice

- mozilla brought back some much needed balance to the game but legacy still 
haunts..

- even MS wants IE6 dead(http://www.ie6countdown.com/) but can't

- intranet applications are hard to upgrade and welded to IE for foreseeable 
future..

 
> Viewable With Any Browser" campaign. http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/
> can be a good start.
> 
> :)

well.. web developers I have seen, won't find there nose with finger, so 
anything that intellectual, is way out of league IMO.

What would change is market push.. demand for websites on phones and other 
devices, should drive people away from IE and *hopefully* towards standards.. 

-- 
Regards
 Shridhar