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Web Standards Meets Open Source?

I have been authoring web sites for several years now and recently
come to value web standards (as touted by Zeldman and many other web
gurus). I have noticed with frustration that there are so many hacks
(tricks to take advantage of browser buggy-ness) and special rules to
be remembered in order to make sure that any one page displays
properly in the many popular browsers.

This leads me to...

Since the many programmers authoring their own browsers (IE, Firefox,
Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc.) ultimately have to implement the same
W3C specs, why don't they all work together to develop one engine/DOM
for rendering web content and share it?

The browsers, could simply be differentiated by the
features/interfaces they offer. Wouldn't this shared effort result in
making the web a better place for every one -- both the users and
designers?

Am I missing something?

Sincerely,
Mario T. Lanza
Clarity Information Architecture, Inc.
2004.09
Jul 23 '05 #1
23 2440
Mario T. Lanza wrote:
Since the many programmers authoring their own browsers (IE, Firefox,
Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc.) ultimately have to implement the same
W3C specs, why don't they all work together to develop one engine/DOM
for rendering web content and share it?


Firefox, Netscape, Mozilla, Galeon, Epiphany, K-Meleon, IBM Web Browser
for OS/2, Beonex, Camino, DocZilla, Skipstone and Thunderbird (e-mail
client) all share the same open source HTML rendering engine called Gecko.

Safari and Konqueror share another one rendering engine called KHTML.

And Nautilus, Encompass and Evolution (e-mail) share another HTML
rendering engine, GtkHTML.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

Jul 23 '05 #2
Mario T. Lanza wrote:
Since the many programmers authoring their own browsers (IE, Firefox,
Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc.) ultimately have to implement the same
W3C specs,
But there's so much that is not in the spec.
why don't they all work together to develop one engine/DOM for
rendering web content and share it?


That's sort of what Mozilla is, isn't it? A group of people, many
volunteers, sharing their work. Since there is no obvious revenue stream
from such a project, I'm sure you can see why MS, Opera, and others are
not so keen on the idea.

--
Brian (remove "invalid" to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/
Jul 23 '05 #3
Mario T. Lanza wrote:
Since the many programmers authoring their own browsers (IE, Firefox,
Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc.) ultimately have to implement the same
W3C specs, why don't they all work together to develop one engine/DOM
for rendering web content and share it?


All of today's rendering engines -- Gecko, KHTML, Presto, MSIE, Tasman,
etc. -- were created for what were perfectly sane reasons at the time.
You're right that it would probably make sense to merge them now, but
that would mean abandoning lots of code people have worked hard on, not
to mention the effort it would take to get it all working right. And
that's even assuming it's possible to get all of the browser projects to
work together, which seems a little far-fetched.

However, some merging does happen: Safari uses KHTML, an open-source
rendering engine created by the KDE project; Mozilla and Firefox share
the Gecko rendering engine; and WYSIWYG editors like GoLive and
Dreamweaver license Opera's Presto rendering engine for previewing web
pages. Even IE's proprietary rendering engine can be embedded in other
browsers with ActiveX without paying.
Jul 23 '05 #4
Tim
On 29 Sep 2004 22:57:55 -0700,
ml****@lycos.com (Mario T. Lanza) posted:
I have been authoring web sites for several years now and recently
come to value web standards (as touted by Zeldman and many other web
gurus). I have noticed with frustration that there are so many hacks
(tricks to take advantage of browser buggy-ness) and special rules to
be remembered in order to make sure that any one page displays
properly in the many popular browsers.
The best "trick" to learn is to avoid doing things that need special
tricks. Good, well thought out, HTML works on just about everything.
Since the many programmers authoring their own browsers (IE, Firefox,
Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc.) ultimately have to implement the same
W3C specs, why don't they all work together to develop one engine/DOM
for rendering web content and share it?
To some degree, some of them do. If you look through the W3C site you'll
see members from various programming organisations are on the committees.
Though when it comes to the cutting edge developments they all believe that
they know best and it'd be tragic if anybody else knew what they're doing.
The browsers, could simply be differentiated by the
features/interfaces they offer. Wouldn't this shared effort result in
making the web a better place for every one -- both the users and
designers?

Am I missing something?


You've missed that many of them *won't* co-operate, and they've missed the
point that it's in everybody's interest for them to co-operate. These are
the problems we face when we let corporations dicate things that they
shouldn't be allowed to.

--
If you insist on e-mailing me, use the reply-to address (it's real but
temporary). But please reply to the group, like you're supposed to.

This message was sent without a virus, please delete some files yourself.
Jul 23 '05 #5
Yes, I realize that there is a great deal in the sharing of rendering
engines between certain product. Despite this, there are still
several engines and web developers must still go through the arduous
process of viewing their pages in several browsers to make sure all is
well.

Don't ask me why Star Trek: The Next Generation keeps coming to mind
-- I haven't watched it in years -- but I keep thinking how great it
would be if humanity (despite it's desire to compete in this
capitalistic world) would come together in some areas to work toward
the good of all. Yes, a little idealistic... but still I hope.

It just seems that web developers have to spend countless hours and
learn countless hacks if only to make websites available to the world.
Why should so many have to struggle to learn and solve the same
problems? The real blessing would be to have all web developers work
on their content and business solutions rather than browser hacks.

Long live web standards!

Mario
Jul 23 '05 #6
In <bd*************************@posting.google.com> , on 09/29/2004
at 10:57 PM, ml****@lycos.com (Mario T. Lanza) said:
Since the many programmers authoring their own browsers (IE, Firefox,
Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc.) ultimately have to implement the same
W3C specs, why don't they all work together to develop one engine/DOM
for rendering web content and share it?


Quite a few of them use Gecko. The 800 gorilla isn't interested in
standards, except as something to embrace, extend and extinguish.

Nor is it necessary for everyone to use the same engine. What is
necessary is for the authors of the engines to adhere to standards,
and for the authors of web pages to do likewise.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to sp******@library.lspace.org

Jul 23 '05 #7
On 29 Sep 2004 22:57:55 -0700, ml****@lycos.com (Mario T. Lanza) wrote:
Since the many programmers authoring their own browsers (IE, Firefox,
Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc.) ultimately have to implement the same
W3C specs, why don't they all work together to develop one engine/DOM
for rendering web content and share it?


Because everyone would then suffer from the situation that one gets with
all monopolies: whether due to complacency, arrogance or bickering,
inertia sets in and improvements stop being made. Look at IE: they've
acquired a near monopoly and consequently don't seem to mind that their
browser is outdated and buggy.

The whole idea of web standards is that everyone does *not* need to use
the same browser or engine. Having a single rendering engine is about as
desirable as having a single make of telephone, with different brands
only offering different shaped buttons.

--
Stephen Poley

http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/webmatters/
Jul 23 '05 #8
On 30 Sep 2004 08:41:55 -0700, "Mario T. Lanza" <ml****@lycos.com>
declared in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
It just seems that web developers have to spend countless hours and
learn countless hacks if only to make websites available to the world.


How else are we going to make money? If all browsers rendered everything
the same, anyone could do it!

--
Mark Parnell
http://www.clarkecomputers.com.au
Jul 23 '05 #9
DU
Leif K-Brooks wrote:
Mario T. Lanza wrote:
Since the many programmers authoring their own browsers (IE, Firefox,
Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc.) ultimately have to implement the same
W3C specs, why don't they all work together to develop one engine/DOM
for rendering web content and share it?

All of today's rendering engines -- Gecko, KHTML, Presto, MSIE, Tasman,
etc. -- were created for what were perfectly sane reasons at the time.
You're right that it would probably make sense to merge them now, but
that would mean abandoning lots of code people have worked hard on, not
to mention the effort it would take to get it all working right.


Not true! Last year, I use MyIE2 and switched the rendering engine from
MSIE's Trident to Gecko 1.5 in less than 10 min.

DU
--
The site said to use Internet Explorer 5 or better... so I switched to
Mozilla 1.7.3 :)

And that's even assuming it's possible to get all of the browser projects to
work together, which seems a little far-fetched.

However, some merging does happen: Safari uses KHTML, an open-source
rendering engine created by the KDE project; Mozilla and Firefox share
the Gecko rendering engine; and WYSIWYG editors like GoLive and
Dreamweaver license Opera's Presto rendering engine for previewing web
pages. Even IE's proprietary rendering engine can be embedded in other
browsers with ActiveX without paying.


Jul 23 '05 #10
DU
Mario T. Lanza wrote:
Yes, I realize that there is a great deal in the sharing of rendering
engines between certain product. Despite this, there are still
several engines and web developers must still go through the arduous
process of viewing their pages in several browsers to make sure all is
well.

Don't ask me why Star Trek: The Next Generation keeps coming to mind
-- I haven't watched it in years -- but I keep thinking how great it
would be if humanity (despite it's desire to compete in this
capitalistic world) would come together in some areas to work toward
the good of all. Yes, a little idealistic... but still I hope.

It just seems that web developers have to spend countless hours and
learn countless hacks if only to make websites available to the world.
Why should so many have to struggle to learn and solve the same
problems? The real blessing would be to have all web developers work
on their content and business solutions rather than browser hacks.

Long live web standards!

Mario


The MSIE 7 dev. team has a blog site and some people requested that MSIE
just adopt Gecko as their new HTML engine. It's not that a crazy idea,
after all, not that far fetched..

DU
--
The site said to use Internet Explorer 5 or better... so I switched to
Mozilla 1.7.3 :)
Jul 23 '05 #11
DU wrote:
Leif K-Brooks wrote:
Mario T. Lanza wrote:

All of today's rendering engines -- Gecko, KHTML, Presto, MSIE,
Tasman, etc. -- were created for what were perfectly sane reasons at
the time. You're right that it would probably make sense to merge them
now, but that would mean abandoning lots of code people have worked
hard on, not to mention the effort it would take to get it all working
right.

Not true! Last year, I use MyIE2 and switched the rendering engine from
MSIE's Trident to Gecko 1.5 in less than 10 min.


Ah, Windows IE's rendering engine is called Trident. Thanks, I had
forgotten its name.

Gecko already has bindings for ActiveX with a similar interface to
Trident, so using them isn't too hard. But I'd be willing to bet that
*developing* those bindings took much longer than 10 minutes, and
they're still not full-featured or close to bug-free. And that's just
one binding; having a single rendering engine would require converting
Konqueror (a Gecko binding already exists for it, not sure how complete
it is), Opera, Safari, Mac IE. . .
Jul 23 '05 #12
Leif K-Brooks wrote:
having a single rendering engine would require converting
Konqueror (a Gecko binding already exists for it, not sure how complete
it is), Opera, Safari, Mac IE. . .


And also would require convincing Opera users to downgrade their browser
to a slower less standards-compliant one.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

Jul 23 '05 #13
ml****@lycos.com (Mario T. Lanza) wrote in
news:bd*************************@posting.google.co m:
Since the many programmers authoring their own browsers (IE, Firefox,
Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc.) ultimately have to implement the same
W3C specs, why don't they all work together to develop one engine/DOM
for rendering web content and share it?


You are completely ignoring non-screen media.
Jul 23 '05 #14
> >Since the many programmers authoring their own browsers (IE, Firefox,
Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc.) ultimately have to implement the same
W3C specs, why don't they all work together to develop one engine/DOM
for rendering web content and share it?
Because everyone would then suffer from the situation that one gets with
all monopolies: whether due to complacency, arrogance or bickering,
inertia sets in and improvements stop being made. Look at IE: they've
acquired a near monopoly and consequently don't seem to mind that their
browser is outdated and buggy.


I believe Microsoft is too busy planning/implementing its next
strategic play. Inevitably they will get back to IE development; but
right now other priorities are the top ones. (I dread it too!)
The whole idea of web standards is that everyone does *not* need to use
the same browser or engine. Having a single rendering engine is about as
desirable as having a single make of telephone, with different brands
only offering different shaped buttons.


This example is a bit simplified. If a browser's features were
nothing better than fancy buttons, no one browser would be much better
than any other. But at it is, standards are supposed to meet a
functional spec. In this regard, every single browser should be
identical. And I mean that! There shouldn't be a shread of
difference. It's all the features (and the design of the interface
itself) that extend a browser and make one more desirable than
another.

Right now Gecko is ahead of Microsoft in the standards race. It is
better implementing the exact spec of the the web standards required
by W3C. For this reason, may techie geeks (self included) appreciate
the Mozilla and Firefox browsers over the less compliant ones. On top
of that Firefox has some truly neat features over IE that have nothing
to do with standards compliance -- take the tabbed browsing, the
extensions (esp. the Web Developer extension), the themes, the nice
privacy features, etc.

Eventually, Microsoft WILL CATCH UP with the current standards. When
this happens, why then will anyone not just switch back to IE? Well,
people tend to become comfortable with a tool they use day in and out.
Some will remain with Firefox (or their preferred browser) out of
loyalty or comfort... any why bother switching if IE offers nothing
more than Firefox?! If the browsers truly were identical, there would
be no point in making a choice.

That's just it. I can absolutely guarantee that when Microsoft comes
out with it's next iteration of browser (IE or otherwise), not only
will they have sought to successfully implement the web standards,
they will have added tons of neat bells and whistles not yet seen in
its competing browsers in addition to all the known features (like
tabbed browsing) already existing in popular browsers. I would expect
nothing less from Gate's marketing genius. When this happens people
will switch over the IE from Firefox or elsewhere (except those who
staunchly hate Microsofts technological rule of the world!).

For now, I choose Firefox as my primary browser and not because it has
pretty buttons. (Though it certainly does!)

Respectfully,
Mario
Jul 23 '05 #15
> >Since the many programmers authoring their own browsers (IE, Firefox,
Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc.) ultimately have to implement the same
W3C specs, why don't they all work together to develop one engine/DOM
for rendering web content and share it?
Because everyone would then suffer from the situation that one gets with
all monopolies: whether due to complacency, arrogance or bickering,
inertia sets in and improvements stop being made. Look at IE: they've
acquired a near monopoly and consequently don't seem to mind that their
browser is outdated and buggy.


I believe Microsoft is too busy planning/implementing its next
strategic play. Inevitably they will get back to IE development; but
right now other priorities are the top ones. (I dread it too!)
The whole idea of web standards is that everyone does *not* need to use
the same browser or engine. Having a single rendering engine is about as
desirable as having a single make of telephone, with different brands
only offering different shaped buttons.


This example is a bit simplified. If a browser's features were
nothing better than fancy buttons, no one browser would be much better
than any other. But at it is, standards are supposed to meet a
functional spec. In this regard, every single browser should be
identical. And I mean that! There shouldn't be a shread of
difference. It's all the features (and the design of the interface
itself) that extend a browser and make one more desirable than
another.

Right now Gecko is ahead of Microsoft in the standards race. It is
better implementing the exact spec of the the web standards required
by W3C. For this reason, may techie geeks (self included) appreciate
the Mozilla and Firefox browsers over the less compliant ones. On top
of that Firefox has some truly neat features over IE that have nothing
to do with standards compliance -- take the tabbed browsing, the
extensions (esp. the Web Developer extension), the themes, the nice
privacy features, etc.

Eventually, Microsoft WILL CATCH UP with the current standards. When
this happens, why then will anyone not just switch back to IE? Well,
people tend to become comfortable with a tool they use day in and out.
Some will remain with Firefox (or their preferred browser) out of
loyalty or comfort... any why bother switching if IE offers nothing
more than Firefox?! If the browsers truly were identical, there would
be no point in making a choice.

That's just it. I can absolutely guarantee that when Microsoft comes
out with it's next iteration of browser (IE or otherwise), not only
will they have sought to successfully implement the web standards,
they will have added tons of neat bells and whistles not yet seen in
its competing browsers in addition to all the known features (like
tabbed browsing) already existing in popular browsers. I would expect
nothing less from Gate's marketing genius. When this happens people
will switch over the IE from Firefox or elsewhere (except those who
staunchly hate Microsofts technological rule of the world!).

For now, I choose Firefox as my primary browser and not because it has
pretty buttons. (Though it certainly does!)

Respectfully,
Mario
Jul 23 '05 #16
Mario T. Lanza <ml****@lycos.com> spoke thus:
Right now Gecko is ahead of Microsoft in the standards race. It is
better implementing the exact spec of the the web standards required
by W3C. For this reason, may techie geeks (self included) appreciate
the Mozilla and Firefox browsers over the less compliant ones. On top
of that Firefox has some truly neat features over IE that have nothing
to do with standards compliance -- take the tabbed browsing, the
extensions (esp. the Web Developer extension), the themes, the nice
privacy features, etc.


Where is Opera in the standards race? I've posted something here
quite recently that Opera seems to render correctly while Netscape
(not Firefox, to be fair) and IE do not.

--
Christopher Benson-Manica | I *should* know what I'm talking about - if I
ataru(at)cyberspace.org | don't, I need to know. Flames welcome.
Jul 23 '05 #17
Mario T. Lanza wrote:
I can absolutely guarantee that when Microsoft comes out with it's
next iteration of browser (IE or otherwise), not only will they have
sought to successfully implement the web standards


You'd better not offer a money-back policy on that guarantee of yours.
Microsoft's position as announced in a company-sponsored blog[1] is that
they will not follow W3C recommendations unless they feel it's in their
interest.
[1] http://channel9.msdn.com/
I searched for some time for the thread, but could not find it. The
comment was made by one DMassey, if anyone else cares to look for it.

--
Brian (remove "invalid" to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/
Jul 23 '05 #18
In article <cj**********@chessie.cirr.com>, at***@nospam.cyberspace.org
says...
Mario T. Lanza <ml****@lycos.com> spoke thus:
Right now Gecko is ahead of Microsoft in the standards race.

Been that for years. In fact, it has never been behind. In fact IE has
been behind on standards race since version 1. It won the markets being
"free" and "already installed"
Where is Opera in the standards race?
Depends on standard: Far ahead on CSS, second after gecko on (X)HTML (but
in practice better on xhtml), don't know about JS/DOM stuff anymore.

Follows windows GUI standards much better than IE, BTW...
I've posted something here
quite recently that Opera seems to render correctly while Netscape
(not Firefox, to be fair) and IE do not.


I have posted such things to ciwas for years. And, odds are than when
someones page has some problem with Opera and not on IE/Mozilla on
presentation, Opera is right and others wrong.

And, of course, as a browser Opera is not easily beaten. Mozilla people
copy its fetures all the time, but it takes some time, sometimes they
implement things better than in Opera, but usually not. I bet it will
take at least 1,5 years before we see "fit to width" alike on mozilla.
(It's awesome BTW, still bit buggy, but in release version propably much
better)
--
Lauri Raittila <http://www.iki.fi/lr> <http://www.iki.fi/zwak/fonts>
Jul 23 '05 #19
Tim
On 4 Oct 2004 08:24:06 -0700,
ml****@lycos.com (Mario T. Lanza) posted:
I can absolutely guarantee that when Microsoft comes
out with it's next iteration of browser (IE or otherwise), not only
will they have sought to successfully implement the web standards,
A brash statement. I've seen little evidence that Microsoft has ever
strove to adhere to someone else's standards, they've always strove to defy
and break standards.
they will have added tons of neat bells and whistles not yet seen in
its competing browsers in addition to all the known features (like
tabbed browsing) already existing in popular browsers.


This is more likely, but in the *years* that they were still doing things
with MSIE, they never bothered to add anything, despite other browsers
already having more features back then.

--
If you insist on e-mailing me, use the reply-to address (it's real but
temporary). But please reply to the group, like you're supposed to.

This message was sent without a virus, please delete some files yourself.
Jul 23 '05 #20
Mario T. Lanza wrote:
But at it is, standards are supposed to meet a functional spec. In this
regard, every single browser should be identical. And I mean that! There
shouldn't be a shread of difference.


The standards explicitly leave many points to be decided on a
per-implementation basis.

For example, the styling of form elements is something that CSS 2.1 says
may be implemented differently in different browsers. CSS 2.1, section 2.3:

| CSS2.1 does not define which properties apply to form controls and
| frames, or how CSS can be used to style them. User agents may apply
| CSS properties to these elements. Authors are recommended to treat
| such support as experimental.

And another interesting one, from section 5.11.2:
| UAs may therefore treat all links as unvisited links, or implement
| other measures to preserve the user's privacy while rendering visited
| and unvisited links differently.

And from 5.11.3:
| CSS 2.1 doesn't define if the parent of an element that is ':active'
| or ':hover' is also in that state.

and:
| User agents are not required to reflow a currently displayed document
| due to pseudo-class transitions.

(Opera 6.x despite having great support for ":hover" do not support
reflowing.)

The CSS 2.1 spec doesn't define what happens to ordered lists that are
marked with letters (a, b, c... instead of 1, 2, 3) when there are more
than 26 items in the list.

Appendix A is entirely optional.

And of course support for CSS 2.1 is entirely optional anyway. The user
agent could choose to implement an entirely different styling language
such as CSS 1.0, CSS 2.0, JSSS or Viola-style style sheets
<http://www.w3.org/Style/History/www.eit.com/www.lists/www-talk.1994q4/0387.html>
or no style sheets at all. It would still be "standards compliant".

Which brings us to a wider point -- different browsers can choose to
implement different standards. Opera has chosen to implement RSS, but not
P3P. Internet Explorer has chosen to implement P3P, but not RSS. Lynx
supports neither, nor does it support CSS, but it has its own advantages.

Users can choose the browser that most suits *their* needs. Standardising
on "one true rendering engine" would hinder that.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

Jul 23 '05 #21
On Tue, 5 Oct 2004, Toby Inkster wrote:
(Opera 6.x despite having great support for ":hover" do not support
reflowing.)
And a good job too! I've seen a genuine example where (on a.n.other
browser) hovering over a link at the end of one line caused the link
to jump to the start of the next line. Try to hover over -that-, of
course, and the link'll pop right back again.
And of course support for CSS 2.1 is entirely optional anyway. The user
agent could choose to implement an entirely different styling language
such as CSS 1.0, CSS 2.0, JSSS or Viola-style style sheets
Ah, a man with a sense of history... but you didn't mention DSSSL ;-)
Users can choose the browser that most suits *their* needs. Standardising
on "one true rendering engine" would hinder that.


Indeed. And in a sense, that's why HTML was invented, although the
actual presentation devices were very different then than they are
now.

Jul 23 '05 #22
On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 13:11:58 +0930, Tim <ti*@mail.localhost.invalid>
wrote:
On 4 Oct 2004 08:24:06 -0700,
ml****@lycos.com (Mario T. Lanza) posted:
I can absolutely guarantee that when Microsoft comes
out with it's next iteration of browser (IE or otherwise), not only
will they have sought to successfully implement the web standards,
A brash statement. I've seen little evidence that Microsoft has ever
strove to adhere to someone else's standards, they've always strove to defy
and break standards.


As it comes to MSIE; it's www performance represents only one very small
sector of "one side of the coin".

MS has bigger problems than the www to cope with when it comes to its
"claimed to be" OP-system component.

The introduction of so called "Active-X components" that could be used
to bring extra functionality of "inter activeness" to the user
appearance of IE has basically "cornered" MS in a situation where they
are trapped to keep it as it is.

If they try to change it now, they will also affect tons after tons of
production controlling software that is already in use since years back.

Study these sites, as my contribution, there are others to but these are
the systems I work with on a close to daily basis...

<http://www.citect.com/>
<http://www.wonderware.com/>
<http://www.gefanucautomation.com/products/fix/default.asp>

Basically all industry SCADA system designers/providers has to some
extent based their marketed solutions on the built in Active-X
extensibility of MSIE, to implement so called "thin clients", and been
so successful with that so today we have multibillion dollars worth of
industries who are using such systems for production monitoring and
control all the way into pure office environments.

A recently defined ISO/IEC standard "accronym'ed" as 'OPC' has become
another "weight" around the neck of MS (OPC = OLE for Process Control).

Basically what we can find today is a whole slew of industry control
products that "talks OPC" i.e. individual products with a built in OPC
server that can be queried, in real time and in a standard client/server
manner, from a SCADA system with a built in OPC client.

Would you believe me if I say that there is of course more than one
Active-X control available for MSIE that allows it to act as a "thin"
OPC client over an intranet as well as over Internet?

In fact there is a wild flora of Active-X stuff out on the market, far
from all of it produced by MS, that requires a "known" behavior of MSIE
in order to allow factories to automate the production of whatever it is
that gives them their revenue.

MS can not stand up against this flow, they opened up for it them selves
some years back and are now more or less trapped by developments that
has taken place - in cooperation with - as well as totally uncontrolled
by - MS.

MSIE is in fact "bad business" for MS today. In those places where it's
used for the most money making things, MS makes no money on it since
they delivered it for free with the OP-system that is on the machine
that is already there.

And the revenue for the key product in that money making situation, the
Active-X control, goes to some one else :-)

This is one of the main reasons as to why www related updates to MSIE
has been stopped for several years.

There is no money in it for Bill Gates :-)

--
Rex
Jul 23 '05 #23
(Tim in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html)
On 4 Oct 2004 08:24:06 -0700,
ml****@lycos.com (Mario T. Lanza) posted:
I can absolutely guarantee that when Microsoft comes
out with it's next iteration of browser (IE or otherwise), not only
will they have sought to successfully implement the web standards,
A brash statement.


And IMO quite unlikely, too. When MS really goes for integration of
offline/online activity on OS-level, a dedicated HTML-browsing
frontend is no longer neccessary. That's their plan, I assume.
I've seen little evidence that Microsoft has ever
strove to adhere to someone else's standards, they've always strove to defy
and break standards.


they will have added tons of neat bells and whistles not yet seen in
its competing browsers in addition to all the known features (like
tabbed browsing) already existing in popular browsers.


This is more likely, but in the *years* that they were still doing things
with MSIE, they never bothered to add anything, despite other browsers
already having more features back then.


Whatever Bells and Whistles there be, it certainly wont be in anything
called browser.

Tilman
--
Der statistische Tote ist dir eal. Der stochastische Tote bist du selber.
Jul 23 '05 #24

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