This is one big long rant and bounces around a bit but stay with me :)
I'll admit it I'm a hypocrite when it comes to web development. I'll rant and rave about about standards compliance and the right way to do things.
http://carlback.blogspot.com/search/label/standards
http://carlback.blogspot.com/2006/11/javascript-pet-peeves-for-some-reason.html
Then I'll turn right around and use tables for layout, and add my own namespaced attributes to HTML elements and then tell people not to worry about standards mode and XHTML validation.
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=1138556#1138556
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=2051001#2051001
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=1025081#1025081
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/message.jspa?messageID=2271436#2271436
http://carlback.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html
http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:561667500346126206#611615600346656142
You might ask how I can do this and look myself in the mirror, especially some of you that have been on the the receiving end of the ranting, well let me tell you there are three very important reasons.
TIME , MONEY , REALITY
TIME and MONEY you never have enough, neither does your boss/company/client/etc. And you need to finish the current project you are on yesterday and get started on the next project the day before that , sound familiar ;)
Getting to 95% standards compliance is easy, that last 5% is what is the killer, and nobody even cares except some buggy W3C validator.
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-TBPekxc1dLNy5DOloPfzVvFIVOWMB0li?p=736
XHTML is not the solution to a problem that concerns anybody except the guys who have to write
parsers that convert markup into DOM trees.
Building a tableless layout is all great and good. Except then you have to spend extra time and effort QA'ing because the different browsers render CSS different, or not at all (more on that later).
Even if the newest browser version renders things better if you are like most people and want to reach the biggest audience then you need to support older browsers for a long time (IE 6 is not going away anytime soon).
REALITY is the 800 pound gorilla and that gorilla's main branch to beat you over the head with is my favorite, the most useful and most ubiquitous piece of software in the world, the web browser.
It's not my fault I didn't do it.
MS did it with IE.
Netscape did it with Netscape. (RIP)
Mozila Group did it with Firefox.
Apple did with Safari.
Opera did with Opera.
And what did they do?
They are the ones that don't render things correctly and even more importantly they don't render consistently , and let me tell you the big secret, they probably never will unless they all decide to start using the same rendering engine, which isn't going to happen, and truthfully shouldn't, competition is good and will result in better browsers. Look how much better IE7 is compared to IE6 and IE 8 just passed the ACID 2 test which is huge, and the reason for these improvements because Firefox is so much better than IE, at least for now.
Don't get my wrong standards compliance is a worthy goal, but like most things in this world it's the journey not the destination that is the worthier part.
As you strive to get to 100% standards compliance your page weight goes down, your CSS gets separated out of the HTML to where it belongs. And the closer you get the easier it is but it's a never ending process, HTML 5 will be here sooner than you know it, and this will start over again.
On APEX's end we will continue to make sure the HTML we generate is as close as we can make it to XHTML compliant as we can while still supporting the widest range of browsers in the easiest way.
PS. NO!!!! YOU STILL CAN'T USE FONT TAGS ANYMORE, THAT IS TOO HYPOCRITICAL EVEN FOR ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm a web developer first and foremost so this comment really hit home.
And it was found on a Slashdot article which makes it better/worse. It's the first comment down and I doubt it will move down from the top.
>>
I once joked with a colleague that Internet Explorer has probably wiped billions off pounds off the world economy. I laughed, paused for a moment, and realised it's probably completely true. What could the world have done with all those countless hours hacking their CSS to support the trash that is Internet Explorer?
Doesn't it make you depressed?
Simon
>>
Good job Simon I don't know who you are but that is spot on.
All this is in response to a Blog posting on the IE blog http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/default.aspx where they release the name of the next IE version.
Name??
Are you freaking kidding me?
What about standards compliance??
What about fixing layout bugs??
I have a real good name for Internet Explorer but I can't write it in this family friendly blog!
Of course fixing these things might impact Adobe's and Microsoft's little Air vs Silverlight war and who would want that?
PS: I hate IE and all the time of mine it has wasted, and to be fair I used to hate Netscape 4.5 just as much for the same reason.
LONG LIVE FIREFOX!!!!!!!!!!!
