[10668] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: FW: IE4.0 and W3C Standards
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bede McCall)
Wed Mar 5 22:05:12 1997
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 1997 21:56:38 -0500 (EST)
From: bede@mitre.org (Bede McCall)
To: scotti@microsoft.com
Cc: www-style@w3.org, www-talk@w3.org
In-Reply-To: <4175E9758584CF11927E00805F68ACFA0248F620@RED-99-MSG> (message from Scott Isaacs on Tue, 4 Mar 1997 18:38:14 -0800)
Resent-From: www-talk@w3.org
From: Scott Isaacs <scotti@microsoft.com>
Subject: FW: IE4.0 and W3C Standards
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 1997 18:38:14 -0800
[ . . . ]
> All new features being introduced in Internet Explorer 4.0 are under
> discussion with the W3C. Dynamic HTML is Microsoft's IMPLEMENTATION of
> W3C's emerging work. For example, Internet Explorer 4.0 will support
> the recently released forms working draft and CSS Positioning working
> draft.
[ . . . ]
I'm not sure whether to interpret this as good news or bad. On one
hand, it looks like Microsoft is trying to do The Right Thing by
implementing W3C recommendations in their IE4 product, which I think
is absolutely and completely terrific.
On the other hand, if what you're saying is true, your implementation
is being based on incomplete W3C work, published internally only in
the form of working drafts and "discussions". This is very much like
basing a protocol implementation on an IETF working group's draft-rfc,
which can change considerably over time as it gets "debugged" and may
not even become a numbered RFC. As a result, I have the feeling that
Microsoft may be jumping the gun purely for the sake of gaining market
share before the final spec is made public by the W3C. There is
clearly a resulting risk that "bugs" in the draft W3C spec will
instantly become part of an entrenched installed base of IE4 browsers,
which seems unlikely to be good for either the W3C or its ~160
members, including Microsoft.
--
Bede McCall <bede@mitre.org>
The MITRE Corporation Tel: (617) 271-2839
202 Burlington Road, M/S K321 FAX: (617) 271-2423
Bedford, Massachusetts 01730-1420
