I rarely run into a site that is IE only these days.
I'm not talking about Internet Explorer-only sites. I'm talking about all sites that expect Internet Explorer to behave as it always has; in other words, sites that are compatible with Internet Explorer despite its deviations from the specifications. There are a number of ways in which this could be the case while still being compatible with other browsers, for example user-agent sniffing, conditional comments, syntax hacks, etc.
Since then, I realized that character encoding could be handled much like transfer encoding: through a transformation to UTF-8.
And that's how I'd do it too. But if I recall correctly, browsers tend to just insert a <meta> element instead or ignore the issue entirely.
But what would rendering profiles be transformed to, if we are trying to avoid the use of http-equiv?
I'm not against using http-equiv for the purpose of providing HTTP information in a non-HTTP situation like loading from disk, it's just a poor substitute when HTTP headers are available. If a web browser has no other way of preserving the HTTP metadata, then it should use http-equiv. But that's the web browser's job, not the web developer's. And as I pointed out, this is already an issue for a number of HTTP headers, so it's no real argument against using it in this case too. The complexity cost has already been incurred by the very nature of the HTTP protocol.
they don't introduce custom extensions to doctypes to render correctly
Firefox, like most other browsers, uses doctype switching. If it didn't, they'd have to choose between breaking compatibility with a hell of a lot of websites or following the specifications. The only difference here is that Microsoft are using the standard HTML way of including metadata rather than using the doctype as a heuristic.
Yes, let the site break by default. Let it render like hell, without any change to the site. Just offer the user a "try to make this site look better" button, that will switch through the various so-called "compatibility" rendering modes.
Microsoft always does this; they ignore the user and focus on the developers
You advocate breaking things by default and claim Microsoft are the ones ignoring the needs of the users?
I'm fine, Microsoft, with you inventing and respecting some non-standard tag
<meta> has been a standard HTML "tag" (you mean element type) for 13 years, first introduced in HTML 2.0 in 1995.
let me be the voice of developers everywhere begging you to please let us summarily ignore this.
This new tag is supposed to apply to web-pages where the web author has already explicitly said he wants strict rendering, because he said so in the DOCTYPE.
No, that's not at all the case.
Way back when the web was first taking off in a big way, browser vendors were adding lots of proprietary element types and attributes. Most of them weren't very well thought out, but there was a pressing need to get them into a specification to ensure interoperability. The result was HTML 3.2, with a lot of stuff that really shouldn't be in there.
The next version of HTML took all these out again because better ways (e.g. CSS) had been developed to handle their functionality. Of course, there needed to be an upgrade path from HTML 3.2 to HTML 4, so the W3C published HTML 4 in two major forms — a backwards-compatible document type, called "Transitional", and a modern document type, called "Strict".
That's what the "strict" refers to in the doctype. It's got nothing to do with rendering modes.
Now, when Internet Explorer 5 for the Mac was being developed, Microsoft realised that they couldn't improve its conformance to the specifications without breaking backwards compatibility. They came up with a hack that guessed whether to be backwards-compatible or specifications-compatible by looking at the doctype to see if it was there, if it was out of date, etc.
This "doctype switching" is a proprietary, non-standard hack, that happened to catch on amongst browsers. The fact that a document refers to the strict doctype does not imply that the developer is choosing a particular rendering mode, it just means that they are using a modern document type.
But instead of just fixing IE so that it renders that standards-compliant code better and better
No, this is exactly what they are doing, and this is the very reason why such a switch is necessary.
Microsoft's plan isn't sustainable or elegant: they basically want the entire web-community to add another tag each time MS releases a new version of IE.
No, this isn't the case. Any developer who wants Internet Explorer to use its most recent rendering engine at all times can select "edge" and be done with it.
The entire point of these standards was to get away from browser-specific tags and hacks.
Yes, and this is an attempt to do just that. Doctype switching is a proprietary hack. <meta> is the standard HTML method of including metadata. Furthermore, providing a switch like this allows them to slowly deprecate the older rendering engines over time.
Put otherwise: Instead of asking everyone who has written a standards-compliant page to add-in a non-standard tag to make it work in IE... wouldn't it be easier to tell everyone "hey, if you've coded a page that is ~almost~ standards-compliant, but relies in some way on IE7-specific behavior, then add in this <NotQuiteStandard> tag, and IE8 will render it like IE7."
No, this would cause mass regressions because there are a hell of a lot of unmaintained websites out there.
So all Microsoft have to do is to change the user agent string to something that will not trigger ie6/7 workaround.
Yes, and that will mean that Internet Explorer 8 users get turned away from many sites and any legacy bugs remaining will cause problems again despite web developers already providing an Internet Explorer fix.
Defaulting to backwards compatibility is the only way to avoid mass regressions. Any developer who wants the new mode can select it very easily. I have hated Internet Explorer for years because of its impact on my work, and even I can acknowledge that this is the best approach.
Media type (e.g. image/png vs. image/gif) is encoded in the filename, as is content encoding (plain vs. gzip).
No, content encoding is typically handled by saving the decoded version. There's no filename tricks.
In any case, that's hardly a counterpoint. All you are doing is proving my point — that when a web browser saves a document, it has to take HTTP headers into account rather than simply ignoring them.
What portable file system feature can store character encodings or rendering profiles?
Why are you so obsessed with solving this with filesystem tricks?
By grouping character encodings together with rendering profiles, it seems you are acknowledging that this situation exists regardless of this rendering profile header. Is this so?
I think you're missing the point somewhat here, as are a lot of people. The core issue is that Microsoft have painted themselves into a corner by not following the specifications in the past. This makes it difficult to follow the specifications today, as all the pages that expect Internet Explorer to deviate from the specifications will break if Internet Explorer starts following the specifications.
They solved this in the past by inventing doctype switching, which is a pretty poorly-thought out hack, and with conditional comments, which uses non-standard syntax. This approach, on the other hand, uses standard HTML syntax and is designed for this purpose.
Far from being "A Microsoft extension to HTML" as some people are describing it, this is an attempt to retain backwards compatibility while fixing Internet Explorer to more closely follow the specifications. It does this using the standard HTML way of incorporating additional metadata. Let me repeat that: what you are seeing is Microsoft improving conformance with the specifications. The mechanism they are adding is so that older code doesn't break, which is an entirely reasonable thing to want.
If you have a better idea of how they can satisfy the constraints of backwards compatibility and closer conformance to the specifications, please, describe it. As far as I can see, this is the best way of doing it. Sure, it's their own fault they are in this mess, but bitching about their past behaviour doesn't mean that this attempt to fix things is the wrong approach. Microsoft are doing the right thing here.
So why is it a good idea to have HTTP headers, which are not saved with a document, define the semantics of a document?
It's not semantics, it's metadata, and there are all kinds of reasons why it should be available outside the document itself, both from necessity (e.g. Content-Type) and practicality (the example I used earlier of setting super-standards mode across entire server farms with a single line in a config file).
Or are all file systems that do not use a separate "fork" or "alternate data stream" for HTTP headers considered harmful?
It has always been necessary for browsers to take HTTP headers into account when saving a document. Consider the media type, or character encoding, or content encoding. Ignoring these headers when saving breaks documents. You don't need special filesystem tricks to deal with it either, I don't know why you think that's the case.
If you think any of that kills open source, then I suspect you are confusing open source with copyleft. Even if you abolished copyright altogether, open source software would remain. It is copyleft licenses like the GPL that depend upon copyright to operate.
I'm just glad that they actually recognise real HTTP headers. I've complained in the past about the fact that Microsoft seemingly ignores the fact that http-equiv is only a poor workaround for web developers that can't transmit headers properly, and real HTTP headers are the proper way of doing it.
I'm happy they incorporated this mechanism instead of further extending doctype switching, which was just a poor hack that has caused all sorts of problems in the years since it was first introduced. I suggested a mechanism similar to the one they will use in Internet Explorer 8 years ago, I could never understand why this wasn't introduced sooner.
Every generation of 21 year olds think its generation is different from the previous one. Every generation of 21 year olds is wrong.
No, it sounds like every generation of 21 year olds is right. The world moves a lot faster now than it did generations ago. These days you can have a meeting with somebody on the other side of the world via teleconferencing. A generation ago, the best you could do was a telephone call. A few generations before that, the best you could do was a letter. A few generations before that, it wasn't possible at all.
The 21 year-olds of each generation are more impatient compared with previous generations because the world moves faster and teaches them to expect results faster.
Translating between related languages (such as western European languages which all derive mostly from Latin) is often a case of translating each word and re-arranging the sentence a little. It might sound a bit funny but will convey the meaning. Thus, all the translation software needs is a dictionary and some rules about converting word order in sentences.
That's far from true. Idioms, for example, wreak havoc on translation software. How, for example, would you translate "Let him have it"?
You implied that your purpose was to stop supporting a poor business model which no one should follow.
You're sliding away from the original argument here into something else. But before I address that, I'd just like to point out that implying something and having it as my stated purpose are mutually exclusive situations. If I've stated something, then I'm not implying it, I'm stating it. If I'm implying something, then I haven't stated it, I'm implying it. They are opposites and you've accused me of doing both at once!
Now, the original argument I objected to was this:
So, uh, it's not just the big bad RIAA that they're thumbing their nose at, it's everyone who tries to make some kind of money from content.
This is quite simply not the case. Merusdraconis was talking about all commercial content production, but his argument only applies to one particular business model.
Now, I pointed this out. You then leapt to entirely unsupportable conclusions and stated all kinds of things about me that just aren't true.
That gives the general impression that you don't think anyone should try to sell downloadable content.
No, you are making the same mistake Merusdraconis is. You are confusing one particular business model with the entirety of commercial content production. And I never stated that I don't think people should try to use that business model, I merely described is as a poor one, it only works as well as it does at the moment because of state support.
Perhaps I am missing your point.
You aren't missing my point, you are just way too eager to leap to conclusions. You've done it in replies to other people as well. Please just read and respond to what is present in the text instead of attacking straw men.
What is it that you think downloadable games sellers should do differently?
That's a separate argument altogether. I'm merely responding to the claim that the Pirate Bay are thumbing their noses at anybody who wants to make money from creating content.
So wait... your argument is that we should quit selling games online because the notion that people should pay for content is a state-enforced delusion?
No. Not even slightly close. I didn't say that people should stop selling games online and I didn't say that people paying for content is state-enforced. Go back and read my comment again.
The government never came around to my house, I must have missed the memo.
What are you talking about?
It is indeed about hurting people if your stated purpose is to destroy our 'poor' business model and send us all back to flipping burgers.
Who has stated this as their purpose? Not me. Not the Pirate Bay as far as I am aware.
You have just said that you don't want anyone to ever make a single-player computer game again.
I've said nothing of the sort. If you can't be bothered reading my comments, please don't bother replying to them either.
May I suggest #5: it is more than a decade old? Copyright terms have been perverted beyond belief. Ease of copying and distribution means that the term lengths should have been reduced slightly, not increased dramatically.
So, uh, it's not just the big bad RIAA that they're thumbing their nose at, it's everyone who tries to make some kind of money from content.
Not everyone who tries to make money from content. Everyone who relies on the state to prop up their business model and enforce the collective delusion that bits aren't copyable. There are other business models out there, so please don't pretend otherwise. They aren't against people making money from content, they are against reducing everybody's freedom to support an otherwise poor business model.
Really, the only reason you'd have to pirate the game is to take away a sale from a bunch of guys who wanted to make the sort of game they don't really make any more.
I'm sorry, but if you really, truly believe this, then you are brainwashed. This isn't about hurting people.
I'd still like there to be an option for there to be a simple ye olde style menu as well.
Lots of people do. Aaron Seigo had code for it but refused to commit it because he thought people were being mean. Quote:
i have two directories on my devel system here, one containing the start of a menu oriented display of the data models in kickoff, another which is a straight port of the kicker kmenu code.
however, in line with my recently adopted "i don't reward negative behaviour" position, due to the completely out of line missives i've received on this issue, capped by yours, it is now officially off my table. so if you want a "traditional" menu, then you make one.
Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?
on
KDE 4.0 Is Out
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· Score: 1
So reducing resource usage, thereby allowing it to run smoother on a given platform, is 'nothing to show off'?
This was mentioned in the summary. What do you want them to do, mention it twice in the summary?
So your assumption is blown out of the water, how do we know we aren't in a debugging scenario in their simulator
Please look at the context. I was responding to somebody ridiculing the guy, and part of the reasoning he offered was the assumption that any bug would instantly be fixed. You are arguing that it's possible that any bug would instantly be fixed, and I agree with that. But that in no way rules out the possibility that it wouldn't. Just because you can think up scenarios where the bug would be fixed instantly, it doesn't mean there aren't plenty of reasons why it wouldn't.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not talking about Internet Explorer-only sites. I'm talking about all sites that expect Internet Explorer to behave as it always has; in other words, sites that are compatible with Internet Explorer despite its deviations from the specifications. There are a number of ways in which this could be the case while still being compatible with other browsers, for example user-agent sniffing, conditional comments, syntax hacks, etc.
And that's how I'd do it too. But if I recall correctly, browsers tend to just insert a <meta> element instead or ignore the issue entirely.
I'm not against using http-equiv for the purpose of providing HTTP information in a non-HTTP situation like loading from disk, it's just a poor substitute when HTTP headers are available. If a web browser has no other way of preserving the HTTP metadata, then it should use http-equiv. But that's the web browser's job, not the web developer's. And as I pointed out, this is already an issue for a number of HTTP headers, so it's no real argument against using it in this case too. The complexity cost has already been incurred by the very nature of the HTTP protocol.
Firefox, like most other browsers, uses doctype switching. If it didn't, they'd have to choose between breaking compatibility with a hell of a lot of websites or following the specifications. The only difference here is that Microsoft are using the standard HTML way of including metadata rather than using the doctype as a heuristic.
You advocate breaking things by default and claim Microsoft are the ones ignoring the needs of the users?
<meta> has been a standard HTML "tag" (you mean element type) for 13 years, first introduced in HTML 2.0 in 1995.
Don't presume to speak for everybody.
No, that's not at all the case.
Way back when the web was first taking off in a big way, browser vendors were adding lots of proprietary element types and attributes. Most of them weren't very well thought out, but there was a pressing need to get them into a specification to ensure interoperability. The result was HTML 3.2, with a lot of stuff that really shouldn't be in there.
The next version of HTML took all these out again because better ways (e.g. CSS) had been developed to handle their functionality. Of course, there needed to be an upgrade path from HTML 3.2 to HTML 4, so the W3C published HTML 4 in two major forms — a backwards-compatible document type, called "Transitional", and a modern document type, called "Strict".
That's what the "strict" refers to in the doctype. It's got nothing to do with rendering modes.
Now, when Internet Explorer 5 for the Mac was being developed, Microsoft realised that they couldn't improve its conformance to the specifications without breaking backwards compatibility. They came up with a hack that guessed whether to be backwards-compatible or specifications-compatible by looking at the doctype to see if it was there, if it was out of date, etc.
This "doctype switching" is a proprietary, non-standard hack, that happened to catch on amongst browsers. The fact that a document refers to the strict doctype does not imply that the developer is choosing a particular rendering mode, it just means that they are using a modern document type.
No, this is exactly what they are doing, and this is the very reason why such a switch is necessary.
No, this isn't the case. Any developer who wants Internet Explorer to use its most recent rendering engine at all times can select "edge" and be done with it.
Yes, and this is an attempt to do just that. Doctype switching is a proprietary hack. <meta> is the standard HTML method of including metadata. Furthermore, providing a switch like this allows them to slowly deprecate the older rendering engines over time.
No, this would cause mass regressions because there are a hell of a lot of unmaintained websites out there.
Yes, and that will mean that Internet Explorer 8 users get turned away from many sites and any legacy bugs remaining will cause problems again despite web developers already providing an Internet Explorer fix.
Defaulting to backwards compatibility is the only way to avoid mass regressions. Any developer who wants the new mode can select it very easily. I have hated Internet Explorer for years because of its impact on my work, and even I can acknowledge that this is the best approach.
No, content encoding is typically handled by saving the decoded version. There's no filename tricks.
In any case, that's hardly a counterpoint. All you are doing is proving my point — that when a web browser saves a document, it has to take HTTP headers into account rather than simply ignoring them.
Why are you so obsessed with solving this with filesystem tricks?
By grouping character encodings together with rendering profiles, it seems you are acknowledging that this situation exists regardless of this rendering profile header. Is this so?
I think you're missing the point somewhat here, as are a lot of people. The core issue is that Microsoft have painted themselves into a corner by not following the specifications in the past. This makes it difficult to follow the specifications today, as all the pages that expect Internet Explorer to deviate from the specifications will break if Internet Explorer starts following the specifications.
They solved this in the past by inventing doctype switching, which is a pretty poorly-thought out hack, and with conditional comments, which uses non-standard syntax. This approach, on the other hand, uses standard HTML syntax and is designed for this purpose.
Far from being "A Microsoft extension to HTML" as some people are describing it, this is an attempt to retain backwards compatibility while fixing Internet Explorer to more closely follow the specifications. It does this using the standard HTML way of incorporating additional metadata. Let me repeat that: what you are seeing is Microsoft improving conformance with the specifications. The mechanism they are adding is so that older code doesn't break, which is an entirely reasonable thing to want.
If you have a better idea of how they can satisfy the constraints of backwards compatibility and closer conformance to the specifications, please, describe it. As far as I can see, this is the best way of doing it. Sure, it's their own fault they are in this mess, but bitching about their past behaviour doesn't mean that this attempt to fix things is the wrong approach. Microsoft are doing the right thing here.
It's not semantics, it's metadata, and there are all kinds of reasons why it should be available outside the document itself, both from necessity (e.g. Content-Type) and practicality (the example I used earlier of setting super-standards mode across entire server farms with a single line in a config file).
It has always been necessary for browsers to take HTTP headers into account when saving a document. Consider the media type, or character encoding, or content encoding. Ignoring these headers when saving breaks documents. You don't need special filesystem tricks to deal with it either, I don't know why you think that's the case.
If you think any of that kills open source, then I suspect you are confusing open source with copyleft. Even if you abolished copyright altogether, open source software would remain. It is copyleft licenses like the GPL that depend upon copyright to operate.
I'm just glad that they actually recognise real HTTP headers. I've complained in the past about the fact that Microsoft seemingly ignores the fact that http-equiv is only a poor workaround for web developers that can't transmit headers properly, and real HTTP headers are the proper way of doing it.
I'm happy they incorporated this mechanism instead of further extending doctype switching, which was just a poor hack that has caused all sorts of problems in the years since it was first introduced. I suggested a mechanism similar to the one they will use in Internet Explorer 8 years ago, I could never understand why this wasn't introduced sooner.
So presumably its predecessors were called robotic walks then?
No, it sounds like every generation of 21 year olds is right. The world moves a lot faster now than it did generations ago. These days you can have a meeting with somebody on the other side of the world via teleconferencing. A generation ago, the best you could do was a telephone call. A few generations before that, the best you could do was a letter. A few generations before that, it wasn't possible at all.
The 21 year-olds of each generation are more impatient compared with previous generations because the world moves faster and teaches them to expect results faster.
Yes, and just like horse-riding or many other skills, the number of people who need that skill is significantly reduced by advances in technology.
If the cost of that knowledge is time and you aren't interested in having that knowledge, then yes, it does hurt.
That's far from true. Idioms, for example, wreak havoc on translation software. How, for example, would you translate "Let him have it"?
Millions? If only! There are over a billion Catholics in the world today.
You're sliding away from the original argument here into something else. But before I address that, I'd just like to point out that implying something and having it as my stated purpose are mutually exclusive situations. If I've stated something, then I'm not implying it, I'm stating it. If I'm implying something, then I haven't stated it, I'm implying it. They are opposites and you've accused me of doing both at once!
Now, the original argument I objected to was this:
This is quite simply not the case. Merusdraconis was talking about all commercial content production, but his argument only applies to one particular business model.
Now, I pointed this out. You then leapt to entirely unsupportable conclusions and stated all kinds of things about me that just aren't true.
No, you are making the same mistake Merusdraconis is. You are confusing one particular business model with the entirety of commercial content production. And I never stated that I don't think people should try to use that business model, I merely described is as a poor one, it only works as well as it does at the moment because of state support.
You aren't missing my point, you are just way too eager to leap to conclusions. You've done it in replies to other people as well. Please just read and respond to what is present in the text instead of attacking straw men.
That's a separate argument altogether. I'm merely responding to the claim that the Pirate Bay are thumbing their noses at anybody who wants to make money from creating content.
No. Not even slightly close. I didn't say that people should stop selling games online and I didn't say that people paying for content is state-enforced. Go back and read my comment again.
What are you talking about?
Who has stated this as their purpose? Not me. Not the Pirate Bay as far as I am aware.
I've said nothing of the sort. If you can't be bothered reading my comments, please don't bother replying to them either.
May I suggest #5: it is more than a decade old? Copyright terms have been perverted beyond belief. Ease of copying and distribution means that the term lengths should have been reduced slightly, not increased dramatically.
Not everyone who tries to make money from content. Everyone who relies on the state to prop up their business model and enforce the collective delusion that bits aren't copyable. There are other business models out there, so please don't pretend otherwise. They aren't against people making money from content, they are against reducing everybody's freedom to support an otherwise poor business model.
I'm sorry, but if you really, truly believe this, then you are brainwashed. This isn't about hurting people.
Lots of people do. Aaron Seigo had code for it but refused to commit it because he thought people were being mean. Quote:
This was mentioned in the summary. What do you want them to do, mention it twice in the summary?
Small potatoes.
This is not true. This falls under "fair dealing". See Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, Section III, Chapter 1.
Please look at the context. I was responding to somebody ridiculing the guy, and part of the reasoning he offered was the assumption that any bug would instantly be fixed. You are arguing that it's possible that any bug would instantly be fixed, and I agree with that. But that in no way rules out the possibility that it wouldn't. Just because you can think up scenarios where the bug would be fixed instantly, it doesn't mean there aren't plenty of reasons why it wouldn't.