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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] It's all your fault, Edd !
 Knowing that: 1) MSN is not compliant with the W3C Recommendations server side [1]. 2) IE is not supporting the latest W3C Recommendations client side [2]. 3) You need a non compliant browser (IE) to render correctly this not compliant site (MSN) [3]. It's an indication that: 1) The MSN guys are regular readers of XML.com [4]. 2) They have been fast to apply your advise to be selfish [5]: <quote> *Retain control* Nobody knows your business better than you. It's essential when planning to have control over as many variables as possible. If you want to start delivering information to your customers in XML format you might be faced with the choice of waiting 6 months for a standard to be completed, and associated reworking of your systems, or to define document structures that meet your business needs straight away. There has to be a convincing case above and beyond altruism to risk your business with standards developed by third parties. The two main reasons to do this are when it's useful for creating new business or when it will cut costs. Needless reinvention is as stupid as blind adoption. </quote> More seriously, I applaud to (and fully agree with) your selfish tagline as long as we are speaking of internal developments, but believe that there should not be any compromize for web public based applications. <disclaimer> That being said, I haven't yet been able to publish on my sites pages which are both conform to the requirements of my designer when displayed on various browsers and those of XHTML, but I keep my sites open to any browser and it would be another debate. </disclaimer> Those of you who can read French (or are ready to use an online translator) might be interested by an interview [6] recently published on XMLfr where Herve Crespel is analyzing the reasons to use XML to create "standards" which are not interoperable. What we see here, is that being fully conform to the standards (and thus interoperable) is probably seen as an immediate priority for actors wanting to enter in a new market while it's seen as a short term danger for market leaders defending their position. I would guess that in a big company such as Microsoft, you have both situations. When, in the late 90's Microsoft has wanted to enter in the B2B business this division has probably be pushing the development of open standards (starting with XML), but the situation is probably seen very differently by units working on IE or MS Office which, in the facts, are very reluctant to become interoperable. Understanding the process doesn't mean we should excuse it and I think that what we need for the success of open standards is just the contrary of what Microsoft has shown here... We need people and organizations who implement and deploy them instead of just pretending! Eric [1] http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fmsn.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline [2] http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200110/msg00908.html [3] http://www.msn.com/ (seen with Mozilla) [4] http://www.xml.com (seen with any browser) [5] http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/10/24/selfishtag.html?page=2 [6] http://xmlfr.org/documentations/articles/011011-0001 -- Rendez-vous à Paris pour le Forum XML. http://www.technoforum.fr/Pages/forumXML01/index.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Eric van der Vlist http://xmlfr.org http://dyomedea.com http://xsltunit.org http://4xt.org http://examplotron.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
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