Here's a lengthy article advocating W3C compliance in web design, while pointing out that sloppy html coding and IE only designs have made most of the web noncompliant.
My only concern about the piece is that it equally condemns IE and Mozilla together. Yet, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, Mozilla is much closer to W3C standards than IE. And, the Mozilla developers are working hard toward reaching comliance with every new release. Meanwhile, it behooves Microsoft not to ever completely adopt W3C standards as long as they hold the dominant market share.
Maybe designers should adopt a Mozilla/Netscape only attitude, instead of IE only.
Re: 99.9% of Websites Are Obsolete
I know sites that warn users that their pages are best viewed with Netscape. Many of my computer friends swear by Opera, but like Shane R. Monroe says, "People ain't gonna by software when they can get it free." (Note: Opera is running a $20 special for students.)
The backward compatibility case is far more extensive than that, though. Think about all the performance that's been sacrificed for ancient DOS programs. (Not to mention the clunky frame PCs are built on--comparatively speaking, little has changed under the hood since the 8088s.)
Re: best viewed with Netscape
I know that there are still some old sites out there that are best viewed with Netscape 4.7. I'm wondering, though, if the same is true for the Mozilla series?
Re: best viewed with Netscape
Honestly, I'm not too familiar with Mozilla. :-)
Re: best viewed with Netscape
ah...you have to give it a try :)
netscape 6x and 7x are all mozilla with a few changes here and there to make aol happy (such as aol im with netscape 7x).
go to http://mozilla.org and download mozilla 1.1. when you install, you can leave everything off in the installation that you don't know if you'll use. give it a test run. if you like opera for tabbed browsing, you'll like mozilla :)