David Whittinghill
04-13-2000, 07:35 PM
I'm the lead programmer for an HTML-based educational CD-ROM being developed
at a major university. Our project is fairly straightforward: HTML, JavaScript,
Java, Flash, and a few MPGs. Nothing too fancy.
However, in developing our projects, time and time again, we would translate
a design idea to code and find that it would work in IE, but not Netscape.
Or vice versa. Or the Mac Netscape could do it, but Mac IE couldn't.
I can't tell you how much lost productivity resulted from this. This literally
cost us THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of lost labor dollars. We adhered to standards,
we did our part. And very little worked consistently across platforms first
time out when we adhered to standards. So we not only lost time building
and destroying our first standards-compliant versions, but then we would
have to write different versions of the same code in order to account for
the various browsers' different implementations.
This was not only expensive, but it was demoralizing and difficult to manage.
How long would function X take? Who knew? It will depend on how platform
X, Y, or Z handles it.
Our project's Board of Directors chose web-based technologies in order to
make it as easy as possible to get our discs into as many schools as possible.
The lack of standards shown by browser manufacturers complicated our development
so badly, that we might as well just have created multiple (platform-dependent)
client-side executables instead of the "cross-platform" technologies. We
would have had better performance and fewer compatability headaches.
For me, this experience emphasized the need for strict adherance to web standards.
Since I'm developing for not just Windows users, it's very important (to
me) that MS (the worst offender) honors the standards that work in other
browsers. If I was catering to just Windows users, I would just use Java
2, C++, or VB and bypass the limitations of HTML.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing MS here. In fact, I think IE5.5 is the
best browser out there and I love their development tools. They've brought
some great technologies to the industry. I am an avid fan of many of their
products and I think their products' quality and usability speak for themselves.
It just makes me crazy when they try to pollute the standards so badly and
make the whole computing world look like a subset of VB. They are the only
ones that win. All I get out of it, is vastly increased development costs
and more unpredictability in managing my web projects. Why not just make
the best possible implementation of standards and market it like crazy?
I'd buy it.
at a major university. Our project is fairly straightforward: HTML, JavaScript,
Java, Flash, and a few MPGs. Nothing too fancy.
However, in developing our projects, time and time again, we would translate
a design idea to code and find that it would work in IE, but not Netscape.
Or vice versa. Or the Mac Netscape could do it, but Mac IE couldn't.
I can't tell you how much lost productivity resulted from this. This literally
cost us THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of lost labor dollars. We adhered to standards,
we did our part. And very little worked consistently across platforms first
time out when we adhered to standards. So we not only lost time building
and destroying our first standards-compliant versions, but then we would
have to write different versions of the same code in order to account for
the various browsers' different implementations.
This was not only expensive, but it was demoralizing and difficult to manage.
How long would function X take? Who knew? It will depend on how platform
X, Y, or Z handles it.
Our project's Board of Directors chose web-based technologies in order to
make it as easy as possible to get our discs into as many schools as possible.
The lack of standards shown by browser manufacturers complicated our development
so badly, that we might as well just have created multiple (platform-dependent)
client-side executables instead of the "cross-platform" technologies. We
would have had better performance and fewer compatability headaches.
For me, this experience emphasized the need for strict adherance to web standards.
Since I'm developing for not just Windows users, it's very important (to
me) that MS (the worst offender) honors the standards that work in other
browsers. If I was catering to just Windows users, I would just use Java
2, C++, or VB and bypass the limitations of HTML.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing MS here. In fact, I think IE5.5 is the
best browser out there and I love their development tools. They've brought
some great technologies to the industry. I am an avid fan of many of their
products and I think their products' quality and usability speak for themselves.
It just makes me crazy when they try to pollute the standards so badly and
make the whole computing world look like a subset of VB. They are the only
ones that win. All I get out of it, is vastly increased development costs
and more unpredictability in managing my web projects. Why not just make
the best possible implementation of standards and market it like crazy?
I'd buy it.