Tamas wrote:

>> Or not... Come on, if everybody was forced by law to provide only
>> pages that look the same on all browsers on the market -- can you
>> even imagine what this means for developers?
> 
> You mean the web developer or the browser developer? I think for the
> web developer everything would have been simplified down as they
> would not have to worry about testing their work on every single
> browser on the market. 

I was writing about the web developer. You seem to assume that together
with the law requiring that only legal elements appear in the text/html
stream, there is also a law that defines the visual consequences (the
rendering) of each of these tags. Ouch... can you imagine that law?

You guys seem so focused on the technical aspects of this. Few people
say that it wouldn't be a good thing if all browsers worked alike (that
is, rendered a text/html stream in the same way), and nobody in his
right mind says that it wouldn't be a good thing if sites would adhere
to common, public standards. (At least this would get us rid of Flash
sites, which alone would be worth it :)

But try to look at the non-technical aspects of making something like
this a /law/. There are many, many questions that need to be addressed.

> They can make their own and call them I do not know, MSTML for example
> :-)

So far, it seems that every one of the bigger vendors that sell browsers
and servers has come up with their own extensions, not only Microsoft.
Some are even standard now... so the process can't be all bad, right? :)

>> That's a starting point. However, it's not only about the elements,
>> it's also about what exactly those elements have to mean. Who
>> defines that?
> 
> Good point. I think w3c has their etalon HTML browser written in
> Java, so other browser developers need to follow that one. If their
> browser does not display the sample web pages in the same or very
> similar way then they need to fix that. 

So I guess that means that any text-only browsers would be illegal, and
whoever uses one is to be fined. Right? So would be special editions for
handicapped. Let's fine them all; it's always been better to be
mainstream :)

> Similar to that a proprietary standard like PDF: FoxitReader or other
> PDF viewers supposed to display the same PDF in the same way as Adobe
> would do.

Right... with the tiny but quite consequential difference that there is
no /law/ that they do. They are free to render PDFs better than Adobe,
or different, or whatever: it's up to the user to decide which renderer
is more adequate, without being fined.

>> That's how JavaScript was born, and a whole lot of other (good and
>> not so good) common features of today's web pages. There wouldn't be
>> gmail as we know it today if Netscape hadn't had the freedom to
>> invent JavaScript and put it out there, for example.
> 
> Maybe I am wrong on it but as far as I know JavaScript then was
> published and everyone else had the right for implementing their very
> own JavaScript engine. Is ActiveX published? Which other browser
> implemented ActiveX or VisualBasicScript than Internet Explorer?

This is besides the point. If there had been a /law/ that extensions
like JavaScript are illegal, it doesn't really matter whether something
is published or not. The moment you're talking about /laws/ you need to
start talking about laws, and not about whether something is published
or not (which is a different issue). 

> My point is that when there are web sites that use IE only features
> then I cannot browse those sites with other browsers. I can only use
> FireFox because they are following Internet Explorer to be able to be
> cdo that. Opera and many other browsers still stick to the w3c so you
> cannot use them properly, only for limited services and sites.

So don't use those sites. It's that simple. 

Of course, it's not that simple: you /want/ to use those sites. And you
/want/ that they write the sites so that you can use /your/ favorite
browser. I understand all that: I do, too. But to make it a law? You
really need to think a bit deeper what it means for something being a
/law/. 

It's not as simple as "let's make it a law, and then everybody does it".
There are many issues involved when something becomes a law. 

> Can you imagine if there was a car manufacturer that would produce the
> 70% of the cars on the world. And they just think they change the
> colour of the indicator to green, or the back light to yellow. Did
> they brake the rules? Yes. Did you forced to buy their product?
> Technically did not.

You're right, in most countries, there are laws about those things, and
the manufacturers that want to sell in those countries have to abide by
them. FWIW, I think in the USA it's perfectly legal to have a turn
signal that's not yellow (which is a requirement in many other
countries). So in the USA you find turn signals with different colors,
which is something strange to people from countries where all turn
signals are the same color. Then, for example in Germany, even though
there is a law that all turn signals have to be yellow (well, I'm not
sure whether it is a law or whether it is a technical rule that is made
binding by a law... you see, when you get into laws, things do get a bit
complicated :), it is possible to get an exception for imported cars, so
you also can find US-made cars driving around there with red turn
signals. What does this mean for your analogy?

I'm not saying that it can't be done (making "text/html" a legally
binding definition); what I'm saying is that there are many consequences
that I haven't seen addressed by any of the proponents of making
"text/html" a legally binding definition. 

Gerhard
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