Ok, take off your purist design hat, put on my marketing power tie. Now
look at what Netscape did. Now look at their results. I certainly want
to learn from that!! They bypassed all the lengthy standards rigormarole (sp?),
threw in some nifty little improvements, and became #1 browser provider.
(OK - I don't know this for a fact, but they're darn popular!)
There's a fundamental conflict between design standards and marketing.
The goal of design standards is to ensure uniformity. One if the goals of
marketing is to differentiate. When one of those goals pays the bills and
funds the winter home in Aspen, guess which one will prevail? No matter
what standards are proposed here, it's been shown that one way to make
a browser more popular is to add functionality beyond the standard. If
those extra functions are well received by the customers, >whammo<
you've got a new 'standard' just waiting to be one-upped by another
supplier.
Sorry, here's your design hat back. Gimme back my tie.
Carl Gilbert
[email protected]