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January 25, 2006
Web design vs "web standards"
Web design vs "web standards": The author of ActionScript Jabberwocky runs a rant on browser variability, and pulls good commentary in reply. He contrasts the Flash approach of defining how the world's computers will act (by getting a lightweight rendering engine onto all those machines), and the HTML approach of defining how the world's computers should act (by defining an ideal file format, then hoping others implement engines for these formats, and that these various renderers match behavior to support the design, and that consumers choose the designer's preferred renderers). I think that both user-controlled and presenter-controlled formats are important in the ecology, but I also suspect that designers' desires can quickly over-reach the shared areas of cross-browser functionality -- HTML started simple, but has gotten more complex and less approachable over the years. There's a good discussion here about the balance between predictable design and multiple engines.
Posted by John Dowdell at January 25, 2006 3:46 PM