Web Standards Meets Open Source?

[Mario T. Lanza]

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

[Toby Inkster]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

Mario T. Lanza wrote:
[color=blue]
> 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?[/color]

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

[Brian]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

Mario T. Lanza wrote:
[color=blue]
> Since the many programmers authoring their own browsers (IE, Firefox,
> Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc.) ultimately have to implement the same
> W3C specs,[/color]

But there's so much that is not in the spec.
[color=blue]
> why don't they all work together to develop one engine/DOM for
> rendering web content and share it?[/color]

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/

[Leif K-Brooks]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

Mario T. Lanza wrote:[color=blue]
> 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?[/color]

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.

[Tim]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

On 29 Sep 2004 22:57:55 -0700,
mlanza@lycos.co m (Mario T. Lanza) posted:
[color=blue]
> 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.[/color]

The best "trick" to learn is to avoid doing things that need special
tricks. Good, well thought out, HTML works on just about everything.
[color=blue]
> 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?[/color]

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.
[color=blue]
> 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?[/color]

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.

[Mario T. Lanza]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

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

[Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

In <bda28a0.040929 2157.4ecc24ce@p osting.google.c om>, on 09/29/2004
at 10:57 PM, mlanza@lycos.co m (Mario T. Lanza) said:
[color=blue]
>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?[/color]

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 spamtrap@librar y.lspace.org

[Stephen Poley]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

On 29 Sep 2004 22:57:55 -0700, mlanza@lycos.co m (Mario T. Lanza) wrote:
[color=blue]
>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?[/color]

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/

[Mark Parnell]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

On 30 Sep 2004 08:41:55 -0700, "Mario T. Lanza" <mlanza@lycos.c om>
declared in comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html:
[color=blue]
> It just seems that web developers have to spend countless hours and
> learn countless hacks if only to make websites available to the world.[/color]

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

[DU]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

Leif K-Brooks wrote:
[color=blue]
> Mario T. Lanza wrote:
>[color=green]
>> 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?[/color]
>
>
> 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.[/color]

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[color=blue]
> 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.[/color]

[DU]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

Mario T. Lanza wrote:
[color=blue]
> 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[/color]

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 :)

[Leif K-Brooks]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

DU wrote:[color=blue]
> Leif K-Brooks wrote:
>[color=green]
>> 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.[/color]
>
>
> 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.[/color]

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. . .

[Toby Inkster]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

Leif K-Brooks wrote:
[color=blue]
> 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. . .[/color]

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

[Sam Hughes]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

mlanza@lycos.co m (Mario T. Lanza) wrote in
news:bda28a0.04 09292157.4ecc24 ce@posting.goog le.com:
[color=blue]
> 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?[/color]

You are completely ignoring non-screen media.

[Mario T. Lanza]

Re: Web Standards Meets Open Source?

> >Since the many programmers authoring their own browsers (IE, Firefox,[color=blue][color=green]
> >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?[/color]
>
> 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.
>[/color]

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!)
[color=blue]
> 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.[/color]

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