Re: color: NCSA Mosaic, Netscape, and HTML3

lee@sq.com
Wed, 19 Jul 1995 18:10:20 -0400


> Wow, are you guys out of touch with reality or what!
>
> In case you hadn't noticed, Netscape is running on almost 5 million desktops
> with a 60% market share. [...]. Those who ignore dominant
> market share in an increasingly commercial WWW are bound to be swept right off
> the playing field.

On ignoring dominant ``market share'': it's not
clear that the term `market' applies to free software, but we should not
have that argument here, nor argue the proportion of Netscape users who
have paid.

Just because 70% of all vehicles on the roads are cars, we don't need to
mae bridges tall enough for those old-fashioned and definitely deprecated
`truck' things. While we're about it, farmers don't really need tractors,
they can use BMWs. Look at the savings! Look at the uniformity!

Luckily, the HTML Working Group *does* care about the other 40%.

They/we care about the 5-10% who can't easily read a regular screen, whether
because blind or poor-sighted or temporarily unable to see, or whether they
are in circumstances that preclude the use of a monitor.
Braille HTML output is being done today. So is spoken word output.

Also about people using text-only terminals.

And about automated use of HTML, such as by robots.

For all these reasons (and more), format-directed extensions to HTML,
such as <BLINK>, <COLOUR>, <CENTRE>, <BOLD>, <FONT> and so forth, are
considered less useful than content-directed extensions such as
<CAPTION> or <DIV>.

Lee

-- 
Liam Quin, SoftQuad Inc +1 416 239 4801 lee@sq.com   <URL:http://www.sq.com/>
SoftQuad HoTMetaL/HTML Editor; SoftQuad Panorama/WWW SGML Viewer