Send a letter to the editor.| Chris' Rant | - by Chris Wenham |
While trying to think of something to rant about for this issue I turned on my browser and went surfing. As I hopped from site to site I noticed that on just about every other page there was a "Netscape Enhanced" message of some kind. Just about every one also had a link to Netscape's site where I could conveniently pick up their browser, just in case I didn't already have it installed.
What ticked me off is that the vast majority also said that I needed Netscape to "View this page properly". No, I don't need Netscape to view your page, and I hope I never will.
For your information, and in vain attempt to clear the web of this ignorance, Netscape is not the only browser that supports the so-called "Netscape enhancements". If you think your page is "Netscape Enhanced" because it uses tables, background images and transparent GIFs, you're sorely mistaken. I can see those tables, background images and transparent GIFs quite nicely with IBM's WebExplorer 1.03. And the last time I checked, the latest version of NCSA Mosaic supported them too.
"Come on," you say, "what's so bad about Netscape enhancements?" They make the pages look better after all.
Yes, they do. And I don't mind making pages look better, I'm all for it. But what's happening is that Netscape is running away with the HTML standard, and in the process turning the Web into a proprietary, platform dependant medium. This is NOT what CERN intended to happen.
The whole point of the World Wide Web, and the HTML standard is for documents to be published free, electronically, and platform independent. The CERN engineers imagined people browsing the web with everything from a workstation powerhouse on a T3 to a 10-year-old rustbucket with a 300 baud modem. It's not supposed to matter what operating system or what kind of browser you're using either.
The benefit of this paradigm is that your audience is as wide as possible, and when it comes to publishing ideas and information this is the most important consideration of all. It's more important than how good your information looks on the screen.
Still, the HTML standard has ways of letting you create pages that are both platform independent and still look good with the use of graphics and formatting. For example, in-line images have an 'ALT' parameter which lets you substitute text in place of the graphics if they are unavailable or the browser can't load them. With some simple consideration you can create a page that has graphics, but isn't littered with [IMAGE]s all over the place when viewed with Lynx (a text only WWW browser).
When creating a web page, the author should adhere as close to the standard as possible. When viewing a web page, the browser should be as flexible as possible as it interprets the code. Follow that rule and everything will be just peachy. Tags not recognized by the browser are simply ignored, and any syntax errors are dealt with as efficiently as possible without crashing the viewer or halting with an error message. After all, it is possible that code can be corrupted during transmission.
Well, browsers not specifically optimized for that page will simply ignore the tags and do the best job they can of displaying the text there is. But the more nonstandard the page's code is, the worse the page will look when viewed with an 'unenhanced' browser. 'Mozilla droppings' make a page look ugly.
When you look at a page that is ugly thanks to these Mozilla droppings you may do one of two things:
Option 1 is, in the long run, the most dangerous of the two. When you give any one company control over a standard it puts them in the position to manipulate it any way that's convenient for them, and not necessarily for the benefit of anyone else. Netscape didn't create HTML, why should we treat them as if they did?
The vast majority of the web's content will become inhospitable to any browser other than the Netscape Navigator. The enhancements in use today don't quite make web pages totally unviewable with anything but Netscape, but in a worst case situation they could. Then, even if you did put up a non-enchanced page, the only people who would look at it would be those with Netscape anyway. Why? Because everyone else would have given up and abandoned the Web in favor of something else, like good old, unenhanceable Gopher.
Netscape would be in control of the web, and like I said, would be able to do whatever they want with it. If you control the receiver, you can control the broadcaster. This never happened with the Television and Radio industries because any electronics company can make a box that's compatible with the standard. But if the standard is changing every couple of months. . .
But back on track; if Netscape controls the browser, they can control the server. So if Netscape controls all that, how do other companies compete?
On the surface the features added by Netscape seem great, but in the long run they're going to give one company control of the web. I'm against that because it's the medium I'm talking to you through right now and I don't cherish the idea of it being controlled by a commercial entity. Let's consider these as proposed additions to the HTML spec and not as if they already were part of the spec. Make them standard, give Netscape their due credit, but give everyone else a chance to implement them before running off with even more glitzy tags.
And don't give Netscape any more free advertising. I think they can get by without a graphic and a link from your page. One Mozilla graphic is worth another page of text y'know.
End of rant.
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