|
"If they all supported the W3C DOM, style sheets, and HTML processing in the same way, life would be immensely simpler; something that I and my colleagues at the Web Standards Project have been saying for years."
You are not the only ones! :o) TAXI definitely represents the holy grail of community computing, but until such time as a common interface is achieved that can take advantage of standard XML processing most of the advantages are negligible. Working in a very large and diverse WAN environment over the last three years has provided me with three client options: (1) choose the lowest common denominator; (2) force a common browser upon the client; (3) develop dual (or multiple) code paths.
Regardless of the approach taken a certain baseline has to be established to ensure any degree of functionality. Even with option 1, this has been done by selecting a specific browser version as the minimum client platform (i.e. must have Netscape 4.x or ie 4.x to view this page). To me this is barely a step up from declaring a specific browser be used by all (the most evil of choices). I find it almost amusing that even with this dictatorial situation the natural tendency to "leverage the platform" by developers causes clients to run with very specific minor version/service pack/patches to achieve proper operation. The problem this causes is that much of the benefit gained form the Web platform in terms of support and management are lost by moving the support up to the browser.
Perhaps continued improvements in browsers will raise the bar high enough to make the TAXI approach viable. Industry doesn't seem to be waiting though as third parties such as macromedia are trying to provide for a rich and consistent environment for browser via tools like Flash. While appealing in this aspect, this too represents obvious issues in support because it introduces a whole new level of support and compatibility requirements (ignoring what it does to MVC development guidelines).
It will be interesting to see how it finally plays out. In the meantime, I am working hard in my little world trying to raise the awareness that "browser standards" need to be replaced with protocol standards (such as XHTML). I believe that the sooner we can get away from "requires ie vX, Netscape vY" in the corporate mindset the sooner we can realize the TAXI model.
|
Previous Message
