Re: Let's talk strategy

Mary Morris (marym@finesse.com)
Mon, 31 Jul 1995 14:39:47 +0800


> 4. Netscape is supportive of the standards process.

I would say that this line could be rephrased. Netscape makes
the appearence of working within the standards process, but
they continue to write "extentions" in their own way despite
the fact that there are discussed and reasonably settled ways
to implement things already in the proposed DTD. An example
of this is the way that lists are handled. Netscape has specifically
used the START attribute as the starting number where the DTD
lists SEQNUM. There are several other "differences" between
Netscape lists and the DTD. I'm tired of watching people write
to the "Netscape" standard for about 6 months and then Netscape
implements the HTML 3.0 proposed standard and hundreds of
html authors find themselves redoing a lot of work.
Netscape should know the standards by now. I don't have a problem
with them creating extensions that HTML 3.0 doesn't address, but
I do have a problem with them creating a divergent trail that
later needs to be merged with the main stream.

Mary