The Underscore Archives

On 06/02/07, Steve Roome <steve at pepcross.com> wrote:
> That's nice for web developers. But I'm just a web user and I just
> want websites that work without having a browser that's larger than my
> OS install.

Install Vista, which will make Firefox look small?

> All these web people keep overcomplicating and bolting on bits to
> something that's already complete junk, it's fair to say it could do
> with more than just a complete rewrite. Starting from TCP, and at
> least that's in process (although no doubt it'll need an RSS feed
> filtered through an RDF->NET convervter just to do DNS if the web
> people get hold of it.)

See, most people (including me) don't know enough about the protocols
and transports to understand why that's a problem. Some of us want to
work with what's there, though, rather than just shrugging our
shoulders and saying "everything is broken". The web may well be
broken, but it's the best we've got.

> It may be possible to do all this, but judging by many of the websites
> I've seen it's not all that probable. HTML/CSS could learn a lot from
> widget packing, probably will eventually, tk managed it in about 198x,
> the web might eventually.

Not ever having been a developer of desktop apps, I wouldn't know
about widgets. Mind you, if you say widgets now, people either assume
OS X Dashboard, or little web plugin bits like the Flickr badge. It's
probably proof that the desktop doesn't matter any more. Or something.

> Most websites are not useful, at least with an imagemap you wouldn't
> have to bother watching IE crash as it tries to render some clever
> css/xhtml/svg animated navigation tool.

There's been a lot more than just fluff created.

> No, no, this web dev stuff is not for me, I was really hoping someone
> could point me at a site that uses tables though that doesn't work
> whereas a css version would work (for a real technical reason, rather
> than so and so browser is full of bugs).

As I said, define "work", or "doesn't work"; it doesn't bother me. I
don't accept that just because a table-based site superficially looks
like it "works" doesn't mean that it's any good under the surface.

> So, less corporate brochureware found from search engines, and they
> probably had a robots.txt anyway, which is another web standard pa[r|s]
> excellence.

All companies should be blogging in order to engage with their
customers, but that's another story :)

> P.S. I wasn't going to respond, but you said that it didn't justify
> your response, so same here. See email is a far better protocol than
> HTTP.

Apologies. Your post was, on the surface, a nested-table troll rant.
On reflection, it had layers of semantic goodness :)

Tim