So? Is that a problem? I think it is good that people "force" themselves to write good HTML.
Why change your mark-up language when you can do the same thing with your current one? That's the thing. Forcing everyone to make well-formed documents doesn't mean they're suddenly going to care about semantics, or style everything with CSS.
Well-formed is no indication of quality, just like validation isn't. It's only a step to it, and that's where XHTML is half-baked if it seeks that goal.
Presumably if someone is bothering with XHTML, they are going to run it through a validator which will complain.
Many web pages on the Internet disagree with you.
I really don't understand what your problem is.
The web isn't ready for XHTML. The text/html MIME type is used for almost all of the documents written in it, because that strange browser from Redmond doesn't support the proper MIME type.
It offers no advantages to web designers that don't need namespaces and/or don't need to use XML tools on their documents.
"Yeah! People who write well formed, easy to parse XHTML documents when they don't necessarily have to are just sheep following a fad."
You can do the same thing with HTML 4.01. The difference is that XHTML forces you to.
Wait! What's that I hear? Sending it with the text/html MIME type renders it as HTML? Well then, even XHTML doesn't force you to write well-formed documents, as the browser won't complain.
"Look how long it took us to get rid of the PS2-style mouse/keyboard ports on our computers, even though USB has been around for ages now."
Except that that's a mistake because there never was anything wrong with PS/2 ports being used for keyboards and mice. The only USB has over PS/2 ports for these peripherals is speed, and the PS/2 ports are fast enough for them.
Just because a XHTML document is structurally standards-compliant doesn't mean it's semantically standards-compliant. I can nest everything in DIVs if I wanted to.
And who's fault is that? Certainly not the W3C's. They've been advocating the usage of CSS for style for years. Many of the HTML tags that only provide styling have been marked as deprecated in favor of CSS.
You could argue that they should have outright removed all of the HTML tags that only provide styling, but we all know that won't stop browsers from rendering them for compatibility.
If you really think XHTML is better, think again. While it doesn't support , it still supports , , , , , and more presentational tags. Also, since that strange browser from Redmond doesn't support the proper MIME type, XHTML is rendered as HTML anyway, making the effort useless.
Apparently they did this because the function never worked reliably anyway. So they removed it instead of giving you a false sense of privacy/security.
Thunderbird is the Mozilla MailNews component built on the Mozilla toolkit code base with Gecko. This means that you get an e-mail client with a full web page rendering included. What for? For HTML mail!
This makes Thunderbird a bloated program. Who needs a full-featured web page renderer with their e-mail client? E-mails should be sent in plain text anyway.
The MailNews component isn't that great either. Sure, it's a good basic e-mail/newsgroup client, but that's it. The component has its fair share of bugs, too. A common joke between Mozilla developers is that finding bugs in MailNews is like finding hay in a hay stack.
You said yourself that it's visited mostly by UK residents. It's known that Firefox browser share is different in each country. For example, it's much higher in Germany.
If they use a secure browser and e-mail client, intrusion is hardly an issue, at least on older Windows systems.
I believe that users who have to be protected from themselves shouldn't use a PC in the first place. I don't think your scheme would work, as it's like those parental controls for the Internet: they can't rate everything.
I never had IE4 installed, since after installation I removed the CD-ROM from the drive (the guy from the store where I had my PC assembled probably also did that). Except for once, when I suddenly saw a channel bar and such, which is how I know this.
It still meant IE3 was installed, though. Yes, I did some 'hacking' to not have it installed. I edited.inf files following these instructions: http://toastytech.com/evil/lab.html#rem95
I don't think an OS can realistically do something about them. It doesn't know what malware is. Most of it is also installed due to user studipidity, so how's the OS supposed to know that?
The end of Microsoft's and Mozilla's support for Win9x has made a group of users look at Linux at an alternative, I've seen on MozillaZine. So there's definitely some truth to the article.
Most of the users will stay with Windows 98, though. Most of them find it works fine for their needs, and don't see why they should buy a new PC or OS if their current one works fine, and there's no problem with that.
I know it's common opinion to look at Win9x users in this day and age as people who are clueless about PCs, but a small subset of them do have a clue, and stay with Win9x by choice for a variety of reasons:
-It does everything they want it to do. -They have learned how to practice security so running Win9x is safer than WinXP. -They don't like Windows XP as an OS, much less see it as an upgrade path.
Myself, I still use Windows 95 OSR 2.5, IE-free, with the only browser here being SeaMonkey, behind a hardware firewall. It works, and I don't need more.
Up until 6 months ago, my stepmother was still running her Win98 machine, until it got so undeniably slow that she was forced by necessity to upgrade to WinXP.
You do realise that Windows 98 becoming slow most likely has nothing to do with the OS, but with adware and spyware hogging it, right? The system might have become cluttered as well, which is partially Windows 98's fault. So upgrading to Windows XP doesn't solve the issue, it just delays it.
It does do USB, you just have to install it separately, as it isn't by default. The USB support is minimal, though apparently there are ways to get full support on Windows 95. You can use certain memory sticks on Windows 95 too, you just need to install their drivers.
The XBox Live service wasn't anything new. Sega already had a paid online network known as SegaNET for its Dreamcast. In Europe, it was a free community service known as DreamArena.
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Then use the STRONG tag. For things you want to put emphasis on, it's semantically correct.
Why change your mark-up language when you can do the same thing with your current one? That's the thing. Forcing everyone to make well-formed documents doesn't mean they're suddenly going to care about semantics, or style everything with CSS.
Well-formed is no indication of quality, just like validation isn't. It's only a step to it, and that's where XHTML is half-baked if it seeks that goal.
Many web pages on the Internet disagree with you.
"Yeah! People who write well formed, easy to parse XHTML documents when they don't necessarily have to are just sheep following a fad."
You can do the same thing with HTML 4.01. The difference is that XHTML forces you to.
Wait! What's that I hear? Sending it with the text/html MIME type renders it as HTML? Well then, even XHTML doesn't force you to write well-formed documents, as the browser won't complain.
"Look how long it took us to get rid of the PS2-style mouse/keyboard ports on our computers, even though USB has been around for ages now."
Except that that's a mistake because there never was anything wrong with PS/2 ports being used for keyboards and mice. The only USB has over PS/2 ports for these peripherals is speed, and the PS/2 ports are fast enough for them.
Not everything has to be USB.
I'm sure people with disabilities wouldn't like to hear or read that. They need semantically rich pages without fluff.
Just because a XHTML document is structurally standards-compliant doesn't mean it's semantically standards-compliant. I can nest everything in DIVs if I wanted to.
The reality is that you don't need XHTML unless you need to use namespaces in your document or use XML tools on it.
Most people who use XHTML do so for the wrong reasons. Part of them do because it's the newest cool thing.
And who's fault is that? Certainly not the W3C's. They've been advocating the usage of CSS for style for years. Many of the HTML tags that only provide styling have been marked as deprecated in favor of CSS.
You could argue that they should have outright removed all of the HTML tags that only provide styling, but we all know that won't stop browsers from rendering them for compatibility.
If you really think XHTML is better, think again. While it doesn't support , it still supports , , , , , and more presentational tags. Also, since that strange browser from Redmond doesn't support the proper MIME type, XHTML is rendered as HTML anyway, making the effort useless.
No, the real issue here is bad web designers.
Apparently they did this because the function never worked reliably anyway. So they removed it instead of giving you a false sense of privacy/security.
You're talking about a suite, not a browser. If you just wanted a browser, you chose Netscape Navigator, not Netscape Communicator.
Thunderbird is the Mozilla MailNews component built on the Mozilla toolkit code base with Gecko. This means that you get an e-mail client with a full web page rendering included. What for? For HTML mail!
This makes Thunderbird a bloated program. Who needs a full-featured web page renderer with their e-mail client? E-mails should be sent in plain text anyway.
The MailNews component isn't that great either. Sure, it's a good basic e-mail/newsgroup client, but that's it. The component has its fair share of bugs, too. A common joke between Mozilla developers is that finding bugs in MailNews is like finding hay in a hay stack.
SeaMonkey can do this function out of the box.
You said yourself that it's visited mostly by UK residents. It's known that Firefox browser share is different in each country. For example, it's much higher in Germany.
It sounds like you would like Flock.
There is no Firefox 1.7. You're probably thinking of Mozilla Application Suite 1.7.
Windows 95 to ME only use DOS for bootstrapping, and use their own routines for just about everything. Calling it a 16-bit OS is not fair at all.
Windows 9x is a 32-bit operating system.
So? The same could be said of Windows XP.
Run a secure browser and e-mail client, practice security, and you won't have a security problem on Windows 9x.
If they use a secure browser and e-mail client, intrusion is hardly an issue, at least on older Windows systems.
I believe that users who have to be protected from themselves shouldn't use a PC in the first place. I don't think your scheme would work, as it's like those parental controls for the Internet: they can't rate everything.
I never had IE4 installed, since after installation I removed the CD-ROM from the drive (the guy from the store where I had my PC assembled probably also did that). Except for once, when I suddenly saw a channel bar and such, which is how I know this.
.inf files following these instructions: http://toastytech.com/evil/lab.html#rem95
It still meant IE3 was installed, though. Yes, I did some 'hacking' to not have it installed. I edited
I don't think an OS can realistically do something about them. It doesn't know what malware is. Most of it is also installed due to user studipidity, so how's the OS supposed to know that?
The end of Microsoft's and Mozilla's support for Win9x has made a group of users look at Linux at an alternative, I've seen on MozillaZine. So there's definitely some truth to the article.
Most of the users will stay with Windows 98, though. Most of them find it works fine for their needs, and don't see why they should buy a new PC or OS if their current one works fine, and there's no problem with that.
I know it's common opinion to look at Win9x users in this day and age as people who are clueless about PCs, but a small subset of them do have a clue, and stay with Win9x by choice for a variety of reasons:
-It does everything they want it to do.
-They have learned how to practice security so running Win9x is safer than WinXP.
-They don't like Windows XP as an OS, much less see it as an upgrade path.
Myself, I still use Windows 95 OSR 2.5, IE-free, with the only browser here being SeaMonkey, behind a hardware firewall. It works, and I don't need more.
It does do USB, you just have to install it separately, as it isn't by default. The USB support is minimal, though apparently there are ways to get full support on Windows 95. You can use certain memory sticks on Windows 95 too, you just need to install their drivers.
The XBox Live service wasn't anything new. Sega already had a paid online network known as SegaNET for its Dreamcast. In Europe, it was a free community service known as DreamArena.