I want to be the first to let the world know what wonderous new things Netscape has done for us this week. They just posted the release notes for beta5 of Navigator 3.0 which includes *HTML* elements for multi-column layout and whitespace. This of course contradicts their stated commitment to working on style sheets. It is a surprise to those of us working in the W3C HTML working group who have assumed all along that the reason Netscape is there is to cooperate in the development of standards. Its also interesting that Netscape chose to post this stuff AFTER other browsers started implementing whitespace control in stylesheets, and AFTER active discussions started on next-generation stylesheet syntax for things like 2D layout and multicolumn text flows. The last time the community got something this completely proprietary from Netscape was the FRAMES non-spec. Yuck. Microsoft has some temporary extensions to improve existing frames (still not strategic nor standard, CSS is the way to go, no question) and these extensions were proposed openly to folks working on W3C HTML specs before we shipped a beta. We even went the extra step and provided those suggestions directly to Netscape. Contrast that to the MULTICOL and SPACER elements, which are intended for one thing only: to torpedo an existing standards effort so that Netscape can own the syntax for web documents. Now Netscape will make some kind of statement about 'market demand for new HTML tags' but of course this is a smokescreen, like the Soviet 'invitation' to Afghanistan. It is one thing to go ahead and introduce innovation and try to get concensus on the innovation, it is quite another to counter an emerging standard with desperate last minute random proprietary extensions. The one mitigating factor is that these recent hacks don't come close to matching the functionality already available in browsers using style sheets. Its only sad that some customers will confuse this with real innovation. Either way it's ok with us, Netscape to be really open or be proprietary, but if you're going to be proprietary, as recent actions have shown, then please stop the pretense, don't claim openness and support of standards when you're refusing to accept standards and just working hard to undermine them. There is nothing "open" or "standards-based" about what you're doing, please have the honesty to admit it; or live up to your words (which are in contradiction with your actions) and adopt the open, standards-based approach. You can go do your own proprietary thing, the rest of us will collaborate on the standard. A year ago you could introduce whatever you wanted and assume rapid adoption. Now there are a number of vendors and researchers writing code around emerging standards, and customers and developers can now choose which path to follow, NetscapeML or HTML. -Thomas Reardon Microsoft ps: check out the hacks for Javascript syntax, lovely stuff that, and again non-standard, despite a meeting on scripting standard *last week*

Received on Saturday, 29 June 1996 17:24:09 UTC