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WWW Inventor On Microsoft's Browser Tricks
Unipuma writes: "Tim Berners-Lee gives his views in an interview with Silicon Valley about the latests blocking of the MSN website for most other than Internet Explorer browsers. 'I have fought since the beginning of the Web for its openness: that anyone can read Web pages with any software running on any hardware. This is what makes the Web itself. This is the environment into which so many people have invested so much energy and creativity. When I see any Web site claim to be only readable using particular hardware or software, I cringe - they are pining for the bad old days when each piece of information need a different program to access it.'"
What does this mean ? Is he comparing the "bad old days" with supposed "good recent days", the latter when every piece of information can be accessed by a single program ? Schlepping up numbers or words on a webpage does not constitute real 'access' any more than does providing printouts or plain text files - you still need a program (or human) to parse the output, and this is usually trivial compared to the work involved in using that information.
And what does this have to do anyways with MS trying to block access to websites when using anything but Explorer ? This is an attempt to make ALL their information accessible by a SINGLE program, and NOT an attempt to make every piece of information accessible by a DIFFERENT program.
We owe him a debt of gratitude for inventing the web but as far as I am concerned his invention does not make Berners-Lee's opinions on these subjects any more or less valuable than any other reasonably astute person, and his opinions are even less valuable to me when they range to social commentary. Most of his writings I have found to be incoherent or self-contradictory.
The part of this whole story that galls me most is Microsoft's excuse: "We blocked Mozilla and Opera because they are not sufficiently standards compliant." Opera and Mozilla are both far more compliant with the W3C than anything Redmond has wrought. Heck, IE6 is a step *backwards* in compliance, with it's fscked-up CSS box model. Oh, wait, it just hit me: Microsoft wasn't talking about W3C standards. They were talking about *Microsoft* standards. Don't make the mistake of thinking that this was an isolated incident. "Embrace, Extend Extinguish." The era of MSHTML, MSCSS, and the whole Microsoft Internet(TM) has just begun.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
So I'm not sure I get it. If Tim Berners-Lee is all about a free and open Web can be viewed by any software running on any hardware, then why start a company based around a proprietary language where the business model is to charge companies for the amount of content they serve? To quote Pamela Hart, Curl Corporation's controller:
"Curl is in a strong financial position. The company has prominent investors who believe Curl has the ability to change the way people use the Internet. I am committed to expanding and strengthening the company's financial position and long term success."
Hmmmm.... that doesn't sound a lot like a philosophy of "openness." And as far as running on any software and any hardware, let's see what the Curl press releases have to say, circa July 2001:
"The Surge(TM) 1.1 software environment, which includes the Surge(TM) browser plug-in and the Curl(TM) content language, is available immediately for Microsoft® Windows® operating systems (Windows® 95/98, Windows NT®, Windows® ME and Windows® 2000). Support for other platforms will be announced later this year."
Whatever Berners-Lee says, I think his company's statements speak for themselves.
Breakfast served all day!
Just Because Bill is evil doesn't mean his browser sucks.
YES. It does.
Internet Exploiter is IMMORAL software, the tool of a criminal monopoly's anticompetitive conspiracy:
In case you don't know the history, IE was created FOR NO PURPOSE OTHER THAN TO DESTROY NETSCRAPE, and put an end to the possibility of cross-platform portability between the WinBloze environment and any other. It did not matter that it sucked, all that mattered was that it enjoyed the full faith and backing of the Empire. The tactics used to push IE down the throats of Internet surfers everywhere (well, at least on the M$ platform) eventually resulted in Criminal convictions for Micro$uck.
Jim Barksdale's testimony before the US District court
Jim Gosling's testimony before the US District court
The court's eventual findings of fact which vindicated both of these men
If IE treats a given piece of html differently from NetScrape, IE's functionality for that particular feature is broken. Of course, I wouldn't wait around for the Empire to fix it, just ignore it.
If a webpage somewhere does not work on NetScrape, that webpage is broken, and needs to be fixed. Of course, if it works in IE that's another good indication that it's BROKEN.
This is not a technical issue, it is a moral issue.
No one has ever given the slightest rip for the W3C html(whichever) standard, and no one is about to start now.
It's time, however, to stop the takeover of the WWW by the Evil Empire. DO NOT CODE FOR THE EVIL INTERNET EXPLOITER "BROWSER". WRITE WWW CODE FOR THE WEB'S LEGITIMATE BROWSER, NETSCRAPE.
And hope to God that someday we get something _better_!
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.