Slashdot Mirror

You right.. never thought to look, but playstation.com fails miserably at xhtml According to http://valiadator.w3c.org/ the http://www.us.playstation.com/ site throws up 159 errors and 88 warnings. It looks like none of the images have alt tags... and they did some real bad coding.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

This, of course, would be a monumental undertaking -- basically creating a security access tunable virtual window into multiple OSs with a consistent display of graphical user interface with full multimedia capabilities worthy of building quality simulations/games - in addition to your standard office type applications and persistence capabilities. This would take a large team to build, with the expectation that it would be used as a framework by large numbers of developers; the W3C's view of these kinds of capabilities is only in its infancy - via the Web Applications Working Group, and what is there looks less ambitious than we are talking about here.

FU.

Wanna do something, troll? Just shut up and join the W3C.

Troll.

w3c.org . There's no better place to keep the standards related to the web.

Did you know that javascript will go ahead and add a closing select tag for you

var code = '<select name="whatever">';
 
for(var i=0; i<myoptions.length; i++)
{
//Tailor for your code
    code += '<option name="option'+i+'">'+myoptions[i]+'</option>';
}
 
//As of right here, "code" is still a String object.
 
//Here we add it into our DIV. The browser will parse the HTML, and create a renderable object model out of it.
mydiv.innerHTML += code;

Try AJAX with markup only, no hand-written JavaScript, by using the W3C's XForms standard. There are a number of implementations such as the Servlet-based Chiba (which fronts for Dojo and other packages), FormFaces written entirely in JavaScript (no server-side component), entire server-side pipeline systems such as Orbeon, and full client implementations such as the Mozilla/Firefox XForms Extension (just type "xforms" into your Firefox extensions finder), FormsPlayer IE Plugin, or cell-phone capable implementations such as PicoForms and SolidForms.

I wrote an entire webmail reader using PHP for the back end and XForms for the client. It runs in the Mozilla XForms implementation but could easily be made to work in any of the above, which differ mostly in how the CSS works. xmlmail

And for completness, I was an editor of an earlier version of the W3C XForms recommendation.

I think that is the problem. They are holding to THE standard, not some random de facto standard.

But developers new to PROGRAMMING need much more approachable material, with clear examples.

And it's why you actually follow the W3C guidelines, and use the validator at http://validator.w3c.org/.

Thanks...

You're welcome.

How well would this work with non-Mozilla-based browsers (such as Opera or Internet Explorer)?

If you know your users are going to be using a bunch of different browsers, it'd probably make sense to build your system around XULRunner. That way it'd be pretty much like a stand-alone app, but you (as the developer) would still get the advantages of having a built-in system to handle HTML, XML, CSS, RDF, etc. and the user would be none the wiser (although it'd be pretty almost trivially easy to provide a browser-like interface for the user, reducing learning curves for your app). You should be able to make it so they could even run it directly off the CD / DVD by just double-clicking an icon. They wouldn't really even need to install anything.

What sort of performance would this give for data access? Comparable to database? And would this allow for arbitrary text string searches in any of the lyrics or annotated fields in a reasonably efficient way?

I've personally not used it in this way for my own apps so I can't give you a straight answer with the certainty of one who's directly done it (my own work with RDF data stores in Mozilla has pretty much been just for user preferences and the like). However, I can say that:

1. It's the system that Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc. all use and they seem reasonably fast.

2. The new SQL option mentioned by T-Ranger definitely won't weaken any of the platform's existing capabilities in this department, but it could conceivably make things quite a bit better for you if you find that the performance isn't currently what you'd want.

3. RDF's capabilities in the way of metadata may lead you down some interesting paths that you've not yet considered regarding methods of indexing / searching lyrics beyond the straight raw text search.

I think it'll do everything you need and then some. You'll probably even be able to find some existing Mozilla-based programs that will get you part of the way there. You should be able to view the source of all of the products on Mozilla Add-ons to find sample code to do all manner of things.

Finally, since I am not at all up on the Mozilla platform, RDF, XUL, CSS, etc., what would be a good resource (or resources) for me to start learning this?

There's a ton of good info for free online for all of these topics. The Mozilla Developer Center will provide you with lots of tips and an invaluable reference to the Mozilla platform, XUL, RDF, JavaScript, XML, XULRunner, etc. The W3C will provide you with probably all you'll need to know about CSS, as well as further information on RDF, XML, and HTML. There are also loads of books out there; I've personally read and found Rapid Application Development with Mozilla and Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide to be pretty much all I needed to start writing Mozilla apps, but a quick glance through Amazon brings up entries like

The best way to ensure accessibility is to simply use XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS. Too often these are seen as overly-complicated technologies, but how hard is it to close a tag once you open it, and why doesn't the ability to describe visual styling in one central location instead of thousands of files seem like a hassle instead of a blessing? Get O'Reilly's HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide and just see how much sense the elegant order and semantic meaningfulness of XHTML makes over prior markup solutions. Once you have a site up in XHTML 1.0 Strict, just make sure it validates with the W3C validator, and chances are, it'll already comply with Section 508.

I think you came to the right place if you're looking for people who can code sites using AJaX / Web 2.0 / XHTML / CSS / JavaScript / Java / PHP / Python / XML / RDF / RSS / iCalendar / etc.

I suspect that pretty much everyone else who reads /. (myself included) can do this for you. Honestly you're going to get bombarded with choices, and the toughest thing for you will be to figure out which ones are even worthy of a second look. As someone who sometimes competes in this arena, I can say from my standpoint that you're at a big disadvantage if you don't understand the tech yourself, as it'll be really hard to tell good work from bad work -- something like graphics design anyone can judge -- something like web programming is a different thing entirely. Get familiar with the W3C validation tools for XHTML / CSS / RDF / etc. and tinker around with multiple browsers. When you're looking at prospective designers' portfolios, run them through the validation tools and check them with multiple browsers.

I usually write new CMS in my old CMS (Emacs).

Emacs is good, but I didn't found the sufficient support of keystrokes like C-x C-e in modern browsers. That's why I didn't choose the Emacs for the front-end for my newest and brightest CMS. ;-)

But I hope that they will evolve to be at least as supportive for ten-strokes-in-one commands as the Emacs was twenty years ago... ;-)) I foreseen that the Web 4.0 will support all Emacs' fundamentals at least in "transitional" mode for the beginning. Refer to W3C eXHTML (Emacs-eXtensibleHyperTextMuleLisp) draft on http://www.w3c.org/ .

As others have mentioned, switching to a more open file format has nothing to do with accessibility. Now, if they choose to outlaw accessible applications which read this software, then I agree, MA is doing something wrong there, but how long will it be until someone writes a standards compliant web page that can read OpenDocument? A lot quicker than someone making one that can read a word document.

And another important factor is, are you saying all Americans with Disabilities should be forced to purchase Microsoft Office and run a Windows based PC before giving them the right to view documents that are supposedly released in the public domain? The number of Linux users, disabled or not, is increasing, and if you are so passionate about this, feel free to join mailing lists and tell OpenOffice.org to focus on Accessibility. The turnaround time in the [professional] Open Source community is much quicker than at Microsoft.

Microsoft avidly opposes global standards that are intended to make viewing websites as easy and painless to the visually impaired as possible. The only reason I have heard from Microsoft's camp is "we don't like that standard", not why they don't like it, or why it is good for the rest of the world but not for them, just that they don't like it. More likely their marketing department realized if they made it too difficult to design for their browser and standards compliant browsers, people would ultimately stick with IE. Instead, people are developing pages with more table layouts, flash animations, and things of that nature because IE doesn't support some of the advanced formatting techniqes that other browsers, and the web standards, do. Which makes the web a much less accessable place.

From everything I've seen, Open Source is doing more for accessibility than Microsoft is, and OpenDocument is a file format, not an application. Microsoft is free to use OpenDocument, but they won't, because they would have to share the market with all of the other OpenDocument editors/readers.

It appears as though the author of the article feels that microsoft has invested much in creating a very wide, broad reaching network of products, file formats, and hardware that makes an overall seamless work environment for MSCE IT departments to play in.

The only problem is, Microsoft products Only work with Microsoft products. Whereas the Open Source community chooses to use more global standards. What should I bring up? OpenDocument beating out Microsoft XML format, the fact that Microsoft still doesn't adhere to W3C standards? Or maybe the fact that the goal of the Open Source community is for everything to talk with everything, whereas Microsoft's goal is for Microsoft Products to talk with Microsoft Products.

That's not innovation, that's pigeon-holing your customers into using your product, and your product alone.

Funny enough, my Mozilla Browser has yet to have a problem displaying a web page just because it is on a Linux or Windows server. Brand consistency is only important when you are being narrow minded and working without standards. Maybe if Microsoft adopted more of an open source mentality about things, they could be even more far reaching, but I think that will be something Microsoft will never be able to do to catch up with the Open Source Community.

No, they should put up a 100% standards compliant website, and leave the browsers to sort it out amongst themselves. I do it, it doesn't take long if you actually know what you're doing. Learn the standard, write to it, run stuff through a validator and you're done.

Instead, the people that put up the website over complicated matters, and in the progress broke it for everything except IE.

And they should. Why release something half-@$$ed that works in some browsers and not others? It means they'll make their page in Frontpage and then change things until it works in other browsers- it's a hack job.

Please- Planned means nothing. It means it might be months out when it makes no sense. I can understand Google Toolbar coming out late for Firefix (it's a whole new program), but this is HTML that should display in all browsers.

And a large part of patents is (supposed to be) fairness to all parties. I shouldn't have to go find a Windows machine with IE to hog for a few hours and transfer all my documents over to paste into their Web form. It's something I should be able to do right away. If I can't do it, nobody should be able to (in this case). Otherwise it gives some people *cough* M$ *cough* an advantage on Patents.

Though I'm not a fan of that guy's letter. He touts lists of acronyms like CSS, XHTML, IE, OSX, etc that the developers would know but the _managers_ won't. A simple:

"Internet Explorer, while being used by the majority of Web users, is not used by all Web users. This is in favour of countless browsers (some of which are listed below) which offer considerable advantages to non-Windows users (Mac, Linux) as well as Windows users who are looking for superior alternates to Microsoft's Web browser. Statistics on the number of users utilizing each browser are available at http://..../ Please do not underestimate the 10% of hundreds of millions of US and foreign Web users who choose to utilize alternate technologies. It is unfair to provide an advantage to Windows/Internet Explorer users over others, when it is entirely unnecessary. All Web browsers support standards, such as those set by w3c (http://www.w3c.org/ which your developers should build their Web site to conform to rather than utilize proprietary methods exclusive to IE.

Simple, to the point, doesn't tout acronyms and explains most of them when it does. References a statistic, and really emphasizes the number of people affected and how common they are.

-M

It's called the W3C.

Sadly, despite the W3C's efforts, it seems that the Browser Pissing Contest rages on.

Use the standards.

You find them at http://w3c.org/

I'd say if someone needs preparing here it's Microsoft. Please prepare your browser by following the standards.

Furthermore, with Microsoft being a convicted monopolist, (ignore the weak googlebombing...) wouldn't the SEC have to look into the merger first? I mean how fair would it be for Microsoft to once again have a monopoly on any technology?

I think the SEC would see that Flash has really no rival technology at the moment, and that it is a software monopoly simply out of caring; No company has cared to implement anything like it, even though the technology and standards exist to rival it. Microsoft owning it would be yet another way they could use their economic position to hose competition (kinda like how Microsoft poisoned Java).

Any site that puts out content that doesn't have special formatting and alternate content for handhelds also probably doesn't have it for the sight-impaired, or others with special accessibility requirements. It's not really that hard to do and no one has an excuse to not do it.

While it looks this story is incorrect, it still should be pointed out that the problem is not designing websites to work with specific browsers, it is getting them to comply to existing standards. If major sites like Yahoo started coding for W3C standards it would push developers of compliance-challenged browsers <cough>Microsoft</cough> to fix their software. Then, in the Utopia that would develop, web developers would know that their compliant code would display the same in whatever browser was used. Kind of the whole idea for standards, you know? Oh, and then monkeys would fly out of my butt.

Recent W3C standards have been a complete joke...

Really? I thought CSS was frickin' brilliant.

The dude said recent back there. CSS 1.0 dates from 1996 with a revision in 1999. CSS 1.0 is now finally reasonably well-supported by modern browsers. CSS 2.0 was first a recommendation in 1998, but wasn't able to be completely implemented until the standard was fixed. CSS may be brilliant, but CSS 2.0 is a 1998 idea. Somebody born in 1998 would be turning 7 this year. CSS 3.0 is still be hashed out. Recent W3C standards have not (yet) had anything like the effect of CSS, and even CSS 2.0 was very slow to get above a threshold of support.

Rather than focusing on stuff people want like webservices, they've been focusing on semantic bullshit and RDF crap.

W3C Web Services activity. And I've got news for you - they've been focusing on "semantic bullshit", as you call it, since the very beginning.

I hear their funding is seriously going to get yanked because they haven't produced much.

Right. We should listen to rumours from an anonymous coward who "heard" stuff. Uh-huh.

W3C operations are supported by a combination of Member dues, research grants, and other sources of public and private funding.

So what source do you have that has knowledge of the funding decisions of all those different parties? Or maybe you can just admit you just made it up?

Rather than focusing on stuff people want like webservices, they've been focusing on semantic bullshit and RDF crap.

W3C Web Services activity. And I've got news for you - they've been focusing on "semantic bullshit", as you call it, since the very beginning.

I hear their funding is seriously going to get yanked because they haven't produced much.

Right. We should listen to rumours from an anonymous coward who "heard" stuff. Uh-huh.

W3C operations are supported by a combination of Member dues, research grants, and other sources of public and private funding.

So what source do you have that has knowledge of the funding decisions of all those different parties? Or maybe you can just admit you just made it up?

Bullshit. The advent of mature and stable standards along with browsers that actually support them is opening up worlds of possibilities that didn't exist in the heyday of the browser wars.

I've been making web pages since '94, and DOM+ECMA+CSS is one of the most powerful things I've seen in quite a while. It's exactly what the web was supposed to be before the browser wars came along and screwed it all up with blink tags and other useless shit.

Take a look at Google Maps in a fully compliant browser and see what's possible. This is the dynamic web as it was meant to be. It's got nothing to do with which browser you prefer to use - but if you want to play with these amazing standards, then you need a browser that supports them.

Yes, you could do the same thing with Flash or ActiveX. I'll leave the reasoning behind why that is wrong as an exercise for the reader. You get a hint by looking at the TLD for each of the above links...

Bullshit. The advent of mature and stable standards along with browsers that actually support them is opening up worlds of possibilities that didn't exist in the heyday of the browser wars.

I've been making web pages since '94, and DOM+ECMA+CSS is one of the most powerful things I've seen in quite a while. It's exactly what the web was supposed to be before the browser wars came along and screwed it all up with blink tags and other useless shit.

Take a look at Google Maps in a fully compliant browser and see what's possible. This is the dynamic web as it was meant to be. It's got nothing to do with which browser you prefer to use - but if you want to play with these amazing standards, then you need a browser that supports them.

Yes, you could do the same thing with Flash or ActiveX. I'll leave the reasoning behind why that is wrong as an exercise for the reader. You get a hint by looking at the TLD for each of the above links...

The Mozilla and Microsoft web browsers are both guilty of noncompliance with web standards. Any time any code works in one browser but not the other, regardless of how simple or complex the code, it's an example of one of the browsers either not supporting it's supposed to or supporting something unnecessary.

I'd disagree, I am not saying that Mozilla support 100% perfectly the w3c's standards, but then they are constantly working towards supporting as much of it as reasonably possible (some of the more esoteric areas of the CSS specification will probably never be fully supported). Microsoft OTOH had pretty much just left IE to rot until relatively recently (infact their main motivation for modernising it seems to be the rise of FireFox), but even when IE7 is released it will only be made available to either >Longhorn or >XP users (I don't recall which).

To some extent, proprietary or extra code support is a good thing, [...]

I strongly disagree, for the end user propriatary extensions to the HTML/XHTML specifications are not a good thing, it means they're restricted to viewing a site on a particular browser which is unnecessarily taking choice away from them.

[...] but it also means that people will continue to use it if they use that browser, forcing others to be unable to view content properly.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say...

If Mozilla and Microsoft can just agree to develop their browsers to display the exact same code and let their differences be in interface, options, security, etc... then we would have an effective and worthwhile browser war.

I assume you're referring about agreeing to work off a single specification telling them what markup and such to support... this is the goal of the w3c is, and they've got many specifications which browsers are supposed to aim to follow. The Mozilla team seem to be trying to follow these specifications but Microsoft seem content to just do their own thing and/or only do a half-arsed implementation of certain specifications.

Oh right, so I'm a troll for agreeing with the W3C?

...An alternative system stores the session ID in the URL. This is not what the URL was design for. It was designed to identify the web page, not the session. An advantage is that this will work even if a user does not have cookies. A disadvantage is that proxy caches and user caches do not save the information, even though it may be exactly the same as for previous sessions. Another disadvantage is that it can mess up the bookmarking -- and bookmarking can mess it up.

(emphasis mine)

...It is normally best not to use the URL to identify the session.

W3C's OWL standard is a "language" to mark-up information to make it more meaningful to machines. Machines can draw conclusions to what a word means by context. So even if two words are the same, they may not mean the same and the computer can draw that conclusion based on the context. It's all a part of W3C's Semantic Web initiative. There is research dedicated to query languages for these kinds of files.

What has he done for us LATELY?

Running the W3C, and we owe his as much thanks for that as for creating HTTP and HTML.

RP

What they say, goes. Microsoft is a company that makes a browser that renders the Web. The W3C makes the Web. What Microsoft can do is what everyone has to do - suggest changes, improvements, and modifications to the standards. Just because Microsoft implemtented the changes without getting them approved doesn't therefore make them "standard".

Too many developers have "embraced" XML by simply dumping their data into a handful of CDATA blocks.

And a lot of people think that CDATA sections are a structural element.

They're not. CDATA is just another way of quoting text. For example, these two fragments are identical:

<b>Here is a &lt; character.</b>

<b><![CDATA[Here is a < character.]]></b>

Many XML parsers will not distinguish between these two. And you still have to do quoting when writing a CDATA section. If you see the string "]]>" you have to emit:

]]]]>&gt;<![CDATA[

This isn't really directed at you, but it's a pet peeve of mine.

Excellent point.

Using a GUI to "draw" a layout is much more intuitive, and easier to do (providing that your motor skills are up to the challenge...). There's a reason we don't write postscript files by hand and use WYSIWYG vector drawing tools instead -- it's easier, and simplifies a potentially complex process.

Of course, if you are getting your content generated dynamically, things change.

Building your table in a while loop, for example. Then all your control happens in the markup. Not as easy, but you have just as much control.

I'm not really arguing with you. I agree, it's way easier and convenient...er to use a tool like Dreamweaver or Nvu to slam out content. It's just not always possible or practical.

Now what you need is a "live preview" editable wysiwig browser/editor that could grab content from a db or external link, preview and render with CSS and still be "editable." I tried Amaya thinking it might work that way, and couldn't even get it to render positioned divs correctly. Dreamweaver has "Live preview" but you can't really edit the generated stuff that well...

CANNOT give you the same control is a strong phrase to use about a tool that is basically giving you a front end to... um.... create markup. Which is text. That you can control. In a text editor. Or in wysiwyg html editor of choice.

That being said, I've always found that even if I use a wysiwyg html "layout tool" I've had to go in and manually tweak the markup by hand. In the end I just figured out what i wanted and let my fingers do the walking...

But, with table layouts going the way of the dodo, why bother?

This is not how the ALT is to be used which is why FF does not do it. According to the specifications one should use the TITLE tag if you want to see the popup for something. The ALT tag is to be used for text-only browswer or for screen readers.

Therefore, FF adheres to the standards while IE does not.

For reference: ALT tag from W3C

Also, when you first go to the W3C website hover over any of the links on the left side under the 'W3C A to Z' section and you will see the popups you are looking for. Now view the source for the page. Notice the use of the TITLE tag? That's how things should be done to get the popups.

So you don't consider HTML to be a standard? I thought I saw some Web site once.... where was that again? Oh yeah, I remember now! It was http://w3c.org/! (I might also add that Netscape (pre-AOL) violated those same standards.)

Then there was something called Java... Wasn't there some legal battle over that and IE? Hmm..... As I recall Microsoft lost that one, too. And that was a proprietary standard at that.

I hate being put in the position of bashing Microsoft (partly because it's so easy, and partly because it's so trendy here on /.) but when they mess up recognize it, and when they do something good recognize that too!

I've never used Microsoft's SQL server, but this sounds supiciously like this: http://www.w3c.org/XML/Query

Slashdot does emit code to an HTML standard, it just happens to be HTML 3.2. That's a standard.

Sure, but Slashdot doesn't correctly follow it. For some reason, the W3C validator is getting "403 Forbidden" responses from the home page, but a cursory examination of the source finds an error before even leaving the HEAD tag: HTML 3.2 doesn't allow a "type" attribute in the "link" tag. My local HTML validator finds 198 other violations of the HTML 3.2 spec. But at least it "works", right?

I'm not talking about web browsers, I'm talking about VOICE browsers. You can have more than just web browsers. The terms "voice browser" relates to the piece of kit that has a connection to the application source (usually a web/application server) on one end and a row of E1s on the otherside. (Or T1s depending on which side of the Atlantic you are.) The voice browser is essentially the interface between the two.

If you think of a web browser as something that shows text and listens for mouse clicks, then the voice browser is something that plays sounds (text-to-speech) and listens for input (ASR).

Check http://www.w3c.org/Voice/ for Voice Browsing

And it wasn't just the standardisation of tags that I was refering to. Write a webpage in Opera and it might not show the same in IE, although both are written in HTML. Write a voice-app in VXML for VoiceGenie voice browsers and you'll get a similar problem develop when trying to run it under Verascape's browsers. What MS did was rewrite a standard from scratch and went with SALT. Example; It's as if they decided not to support HTML in IE anymore, so anyone wishing to write a webpage for IE must use their new M$ML web authoring toolkit.

Nope, you are stupid. You don't have to load the whole XML file into memory at once to parse it. All you are doing is demonstrating that you have no clue about XML, so any criticism you make of it should be taken with a pinch of salt.

In any case, Binary XML will make text vs binary arguments irrelevent.

If all software was free, why would anyone bother developing it?

Gee, I can't think of anyone who would develop software without getting paid for it...

But seriously, there are several reasons people would write software whose price is 0:

• People want better software to do $WHATEVER (for values of $WHATEVER that make money, which is most of them), so they write it
• People want to get a job as a programmer so they write a software package to prove they aren't total code monkeys
• People like fame; they like being admired and appreciated
• An industry consortium decides they need an open, standard, free way to do $WHATEVER
• Some people have a political motivation to undermine proprietary software (we may not have that same motivation; but it is a real driving force for some people)
• Some people like to help others (ditto)
• Your company might want to make your product universally (or nearly so) used in order to be able to charge money for training, certification, etc.
• I mentioned 15 high-profile products that are competitive with best-of-breed and are available for $0 (and not all of it is Free as in speech). All of them were written because one of the above bullet points (or one I forgot) applied.

There are lots of motivations for people's actions besides money.

Using the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) name to generate traffic?
Official sites:
http://w3c.org
http://w3.org

Copies:
http://www.w3c.com/ (WWW Communications Ltd: a revolution in internet access to Delhi)
http://wc3.org (airCloud Communications
http://www.wc3.org/home/ (Walnet Creek Church of Christ

And no, IE7 won't be a Transformer.

Microsoft does not sell IE. They gain no direct profit from people's use of it, so you have to wonder what their motive is here. Let's assume that "good" and "evil" are subjective and emotive words that have no relevance to this discussion, ok?

If you read Joel Spolsky's API war article, some perspective may be gained. Microsoft wishes only to discourage Web developers from moving away from the IE platform. If developers move away, Microsoft no longer has control over web development, and can no longer keep new technologies on the fringe.

This is bad news for a company with plans to move to network applications. If a platform for network applications exists outside of Microsoft's control, it will be much harder to profit from. Thus, Microsoft's interest is served here by retaining that 90%+ browser market share, to prevent the adoption of new technologies not under MS control.

You forget the original source: http://www.w3c.org/2001/sw/

Umm... links appears to be younger, less developed version of the old standby lynx.

In terms of sites, I recommend a local css file to block things like banners, large images, and other bandwidth intesive content. You may even try a css file that strips out everything but text, links, and layout info (e.g., no images, no animations, etc).

Sorry but this belief is common among people who don't know much about the web, so I'm going to be blunt:

WRONG

Firefox and every non-IE broswer follow the World Wide Web Consortium (Found here) standards. The good folks at Microsoft, in typical Microsoft standards, decided that they knew more about web coding than a bunch of internationally renowned experts who devote much of their waking hours to the web. Bascially, Microsoft is letting people get away with coding things really poorly. Once you learn how to make web pages in proper xhtml with style sheets, it's actually faster to do a site, and the results will not only look the same across all platforms (except IE, which botches up proper coding while rendering the bad), but will be viewable on all computers with browsers, and can even accomodate disabled users well. So don't blame Firefox, blame IE for allowing (and even forcing) people to code their pages incorrectly.

Bingo on the graph theory. My gut feeling (read: logical extrapolation of probabilities) leaves me pretty certain that over the next 20 years it will become a core factor in understanding, designing and perceiving most application programs - driven in equal measure by increased use of the Resource Description Framework (RDF) which is core to semantic web markup, increased use of aggregated computer systems based on web services, and the eventual commoditization of Grid services which are still very much at the research stage.

The combination of all of the above will result in the a norm where services can be perceived in the way (code) libraries are today, so designing, building, visualising and proving the completeness of a program becomes "just" an application of graph theory on a very large graph.

The beauty of a graph is that a novice can begin to understand it very quickly, but to know it you need the math. So just as today, people will be able to create simple programs & scripts without requiring too much investment of time, but ultimately, systems architects, designers, programmers and administrators will find their jobs easier if they have the mathematical background to be able to communicate how their systems work.

Develop your web pages to The Web Standards and not to a Program's Standard!! The application will change from version to version in possibly undocumented ways, but the web stardard will always be documented. Any diviation in IE from the web standard should be considered a software bug.