xml-dev - Re: Alternatives to the W3C

[Michael Rose <rose@tele.dtu.dk>]

At 10:49 PM -0600 1/20/00, Len Bullard wrote:
>
>
>What some of us are saying is that we are voting with our feet
>and we vote for innovation and reliability, that is why we
>use IE and encourage or insist our customers do.  Universal
>access is not only not always needed, it is often undesirable.
>
 
There is a question about innovation and standards here. If 
hypothetical browsers X and Y are both fully compliant with all 
existing W3C standards, does that still leave the browsers enough 
room so that their presentation of the same content or their 
functionality will be significantly different.

If the answer the answer to that question is yes (which apparently it 
is), and if that difference is important (which it seems to be to a 
significant number of developers here) then shouldn't future W3C 
standards address this problem? Otherwise, why should we even bother 
with the standards?

If browsers are really a commodity then, as others have said, the 
innovations should go through the W3C. Then browsers X and Y can 
compete on other features, reliability being an excellent example.


Cheers,

Michael

  ************************************************
Michael Rose
Center for Tele-Information,    Technical University of Denmark
mailto:rose@tele.dtu.dk              http://www.cti.dtu.dk/personal/rose
Multimedia in the Home - http://mmhome.cit.dk
'and what is the use of a computer' thought Alice 'without pictures 
or conversation'                      with apologies to Lewis Carroll
*************************************************

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