You seem to imply that browsers are omnipotent... very wrong
thinking... why do you suppose browsers go thru constant upgrades...
because they have bugs that need fixing... that's why!
I never said browsers are omnipotent, that's insane.
What I said - and I'll try to use small words - is that the browser is the
browser. You do not know what browser the user will have. It is not their
job to pick the browser you want them to. It is your job to make a page
that works on their browser.
If you can't do that job, try knitting instead.
So you're saying the difference is in the "teacher's" quality (poor or
good) which is analogous here to the browser software quality not to the
author's design quality... you lose again... it's a futile argument!
Nope. The teacher and the author provide the content. The student's
ability to exhibit a behavior (such as, pass a test) which demonstrates
mastery of the content is analogous to the browser's ability to render the
content.
I do not 'lose'. You are either intentionally trolling or incorrigibly
dense.
If you provide content in a faulty manner, the browsers will fail to
render it. If you provide the content in a thoughtful and sensible manner,
the browsers will render it fine.
What in the above statement do you not get?
Again if an author writes valid code
Valid page != working page.
head {action: bang; object: wall;}
I hate that word, sorry.
of whether or not it
pleases certain individual's tastes, then that author upon comparing
various browser renderings, should decide which browsers are better or
worse... and if a great majority of browsers render the code the same
way, and only one excepts to the rest, then most logical thinking
individuals should find that it is the browser, not the code that needs
refining!
Perhaps. You're saying, if I get you correctly, that all browsers ought to
render according to the recommendations. I agree, in an ideal world this
would be true.
1) This is not an ideal world. Some browsers - most notably IE - do not
follow the recommendations very strictly. The author must design around
the flaws.
2) The recommendations do not always define precisely what should happen.
This is often intentional, and sometimes (IMO) sloppiness on the part of
the rec's editors. The various browsers will do different things from time
to time, and be totally compliant with the recommendations. The competent
author will account for this.
3) I remember a Saturday Night Live routine when Ed Asner was the guest
host. They did a skit where he was retiring as the manager of a nuclear
facility. His parting words were:
"You can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor."
The joke was some people thought that meant you should never add more
water than it can handle, it's better to err on the less-water side.
Others thought it meant that there's no way you could add so much water
that it would be a problem. As they argued, the plant melted down.
The fault is not with the people, they were given ambiguous instructions.
The fault is with the person who gave the instructions.
If you use HTML which can be ambiguously understood, you are going to have
to expect a large variation in rendering. If you stick to markup that is
less ambiguous, your renderings on various browsers will not differ
problematicaly.
Be a man and take responsibility for the way your page renders. It's a
very small person who blames the machine for the problem when countless
others can avoid the problem with good practice.
