I love all the new features and functionality that have been coming to us incrementally over the years - css, xml, xhtml, etc - to make life easier and more organized for a web developer. But the most frustrating part is that there will always be a huge base of software/systems only using the 'old' way of doing things. The only way I've been able to cope without losing my sanity is through 'progressive enhancement' techniques. The basic idea is that a web site starts out with the base level and builds up on that in a completely user transparent way.
One example is with javascript on/off. Start by displaying a JS neutral site and then have a non-JS browser invisible tag that 'turns on' JS features and 'turns off' the non-JS components of a page. Perhaps these techniques can be used for future enhancements coming down from W3C
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I love all the new features and functionality that have been coming to us incrementally over the years - css, xml, xhtml, etc - to make life easier and more organized for a web developer. But the most frustrating part is that there will always be a huge base of software/systems only using the 'old' way of doing things. The only way I've been able to cope without losing my sanity is through 'progressive enhancement' techniques. The basic idea is that a web site starts out with the base level and builds up on that in a completely user transparent way. One example is with javascript on/off. Start by displaying a JS neutral site and then have a non-JS browser invisible tag that 'turns on' JS features and 'turns off' the non-JS components of a page. Perhaps these techniques can be used for future enhancements coming down from W3C