This blog entry is in english. Yet english is not my native language (italian is), so bear some indulgence with typos or grammatical mistakes. Also, I have been told that I write complex things - whether this is good or bad I don't know: but so, if you are unfamiliar with complex prose you may see grammatical errors not only where there could be some, but also where just a prose you're not acquainted with is. Native speakers with an A+ grade in english say my english, obviously not perfect, imports no major issues. Lend a deaf ear to the errors, vocally disagree with my thesis if you want, but enjoy the style all the while.
Forgive my english, which is not my native language.
I do not care where I would be placed by surfers or by more seasoned web developers - whether in hell, or purgatory, or paradise; whether in the seclusion of the
amateur, in the dregs of the
parvenu, in the empyrean of the
professional, or onto the paths of the lonesome
geek; whether in the no man's land of the
nonsense and of the
freak, whether in the cellar of the immensely talented
hermit, or rather onto the pillory of the immensely despicable
blackguard.
I can live with my own self esteem without the avail of my narcissism and of the appreciation of the others both.
So, I guess, I can entertain my fearless perspective also if it is not going to sound
particularly popular among my fellow developers (though some would
almost agree with me, and some
more than almost).
I just don't care: between truth and social acceptance in the group, I
know which must yield.
You defend truth
where you find it resting, not where you
wish it would be resting today.
At this crossroad, I perceive myself somewhat like Henry Miller reported he felt while having an interview for a new job and founding himself at odds answering questions:
"I lingered a moment, like a bird in flight hovering over a dubious perch".Brilliantly descriptive image that one is: it conveys the feeling perfectly, fitting whoever experienced a troublesome hiring interview having nothing else to offer than his or her talent.
Talent rarely suffices to get a job. Bribing or incompetence do.
And there raises my -and of how many Henry Millers can be out there- problem: we don't bribe. We can't, because we are financially broken. And we don't want, because we are morally unbroken. The recipe for
hopelessness is made of such ingredients.
Never follow us over there, neither of us is having a good time. And it wasn't even a choice: it has always been a
condemnation, for we just weren't
able to choose
differently.
Yet, you will find in this essay a
list of lovely guys whom you may feel like following where they are currently having, so it seems,
a great time.
Because things seem having taken such weird a turn in the world, recently, that a
role reversal appears as having
followed suit.
Those who made since ever avowed profession of
anti conformism have actually grown into those who most
diligently follow the
mainstream current of the by now
majority, and who enjoy the
homogeneous lull of an
orthodoxy they themselves would have declared otherwise
squalid - as long as it wasn't
theirs yet.
Whereas on the contrary those who till not long ago would have been declared by them unflinching and worthless
conformists, stack now out as outstanding revolutionists, the only ones capable of saying something
original and out of the
chorus.
Isn't it so? Say no: I shall prove you wrong
better.
Internet Explorer version 7 is certainly exciting news for whoever works in the web development field, no matter at which level in the hierarchy ladder - and it is news for those who do not work there too, because
browsers have become
extensions of so many lives around the world.
I must say that much of the undoubted
hype that has been put by
detractors upon the fact a new
Internet Explorer release wasn't delivered earlier, rings flawed. Here's why.
First of all, one doesn't need to release a new version of anything, unless one worships fashion, as long as
the old version of the same thing still does an excellent job.
Of course, many argue
exactly about
this point: they say Internet Explorer 6 (
IE 6) doesn't do such a job because it has
security problems.
I never understood the real nature of such obviously and thoroughly
fictional a representation of facts.
In fact (for I am speaking of
facts, and not of
subjective preferences), from today's
eweek we learn by the
headlines (which I reproduce faithfully below, though not in their page long integrity) nothing less than this:
- Microsoft Investigating New IE Hole
- Download Problem Interferes with IE Patch Release
- Safari Flaws Fixed in Monster Mac OS X Update
- Opera Plugs Three Security Holes
- Netscape Patch Fixes Two Critical Flaws
- Mozilla Updates Firefox to Fix Security Gaps
- Spoofing Risk Returns to Mozilla Browsers
- AOL Botches Netscape Security Makeover
- Zero-Day Firefox Exploit Sends Mozilla Scrambling
- Netscape Upgrade May Not Fix Critical Flaw
- Apple Ships Mac OS X Kernel, Browser Patches
- New Firefox, Mozilla Versions Plug Critical Security Holes
- Firefox Plugs GIF Security Hole
- Firefox Gets Major Security Makeover
- Microsoft Confirms IE Phishing Flaw
- Holiday Attacks Target IE Browser, PHP Servers
- Google Patches Desktop Search Flaw
- New IE Exploit Spoofs Web Sites
- Apple Zaps 16 Mac OS X Holes
- Emergency IE Patch Fixes Critical Bug
- Firefox Flaws Flagged, Fixed
- IE May Share Shell Hole Found in Mozilla
- Mozilla, Opera Plug Security Holes
- IE vs. Mozilla on the Shell Hole—Whose Bug Is It?
If you are interested in a
up to date list of security issues as they are
daily detected in the
whole of the browser market, therefore
inclusive of Internet Explorer but not
exclusive for it,
Secunia is one of the most qualified and well known resources with a growing list of as many as over 12,000 security issues found till now nearly everywhere.
Here is a
partial screenshot that shows the
amount of security flaws Secunia has been reporting
every day for years.
Click on the image below to see the
full list for today, besides
hundreds of links in it for the lists of the past:
Alternatively, see a
280 KB long list of the released bugfixes for a product like PHP.
It's true that as Bernard Mandeville once wrote "You can't turn virtuous
a big beehive": it is in the
nature of so many bees of
buzzing nonsense
so loud, and «their maggot shall not die».
As it is just in the nature of another stabbing creature, the scorpion, to sting the frog on whose shoulders he traverses the
perilous wade; and perhaps the frog should have known better what a
scorpion does, before
ferrying him: "What have you done" cries out the frog, "you stung me!
Now, we'll
both drown and die!"
"I just couldn't help", replies calmly the scorpion: "I am a scorpion. I was
born to sting".
Yet, from the panorama of the list(s) above, I can't
really see
whence even a
tenuous hook was lent to these bees whereof they could hung this
buzzword persuasion of theirs that security would have been a specific and
particularly daunting Internet Explorer issue - if not as said by means of sheer
fictitious figments and fertile imagination, or even by
artful and
inspired disinformation.
I wouldn't be surprised that much, in fact, if a wilfully marketed
tipping policy turns out being more than
enough to summon its own droves of
sincere supporters, for as Shakespeare knew:
«'tis wonderful
What may be wrought out of their discontent»
An
open source browser explains why it's
different, as cheaply as 19.95. People
buy it.
«
Fans of Mozilla's free, open-source Firefox», because «
The Mozilla Foundation provides overall support for Mozilla open source» and for the «
not-for-profit corporation».
And the naivety is not
theirs.
Of course, as long as among the facts we have to register the one that says that IE is used by
85% of the surfers too, any subsequent statistical calculation that deduces a higher degree of vulnerability in IE rather than -say- in Mozilla, ignoring at the same time the implied necessity to take into account also the indispensable mathematical
proportion to compute in order to get the
real functional-ized figures, is mere self delusion - and of the worst nature.
Whatever browser would ever have the venture of being used by 85% of the surfers would
inevitably be more subject to attacks, and thus more prone to reveal otherwise unnoticed (read: exploited) security holes - and should not be compared with products that have a
fraction of that share, without
fractioning our conclusions
too.
But from the list above, security cannot be evinced as a IE problem only in the least - and
not even mostly.
I am honestly much
more surprised at seeing that browsers with a
6% share already show so many security flaws and need so many fast paced fixes, than at seeing that a platform used by
85% of the surfers does.
Under the above mentioned proportional statistical point of view, we could even dare
argue the situation is rather to be
supposed as reversed: it is blatantly more insecure the platform that has to fix
ten problems having
6% of the share than that which has to fix 30 or even
say (85*10)/6 =
141 problems having 85% of the share:
«Critics of the open-source Firefox browser took its security track record to task this week after a biannual Internet security report noted that the application had almost twice as many vulnerabilities as Internet Explorer in the first half of 2005, with a higher fraction of those flaws being severe.»
(theregister.co.uk, A vulnerable age: Mozilla suffers growing pains)«For the last six months of 2004, researchers found more vulnerabilities in Mozilla's Firefox than Microsoft's Internet Explorer, according to Symantec's bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report. The report tallied 21 vulnerabilities for Mozilla Firefox versus 13 for Internet Explorer.
(...) The assumption that Internet Explorer is easier to exploit is a common misconception.»
(securityfocus.com, Firefox's security coming under scrutiny)I am not inclined to use foul terms: but when it is said, in spite of such lists as the one above, that IE is more insecure than other browsers, I conclude that either it is said out of
bad faith, or out of misinformation, or out of malevolence - which is slightly different from being just a
misconception: in fact no evidence ever warranted this
disproportion in the claims, and no
mere misconception could be upheld for
so long and so unblinkingly, before so much disputable evidence.
However since I think it was
Napoleon who stated «
never ascribe to
malice what can be
adequately explained through incompetence», I am uncertain on whether it should be rather ascribed as being said out of plain stupidity.
I remember when once I was answered on a newsgroup that the reason Mozilla didn't parse correctly some Css values was that I didn't postfix the numbers with their unit of measure (
pixels). But to me a number is
clear enough of a command; so to the answer that the missing execution of the command had to be imputed to Mozilla's
perfect compliance with the standards, I suggested it had
rather to be imputed to
perfect obtuseness - whether then that was out of
compliance or out of
other reasons, appeared immaterial to me, and
not flattering for any of the
reasons brought forth
anyway.
IE 6 is a good browser,
neither less nor more insecure than any other, and neither
less nor more compliant than the others. True, it does not interpret correctly css
fixed layers.
But then, what about this in Mozilla:
<div style="border:#000000 1px solid; color:#ff0000; width:200; height:20;overflow: visible;"><br>
a<br>b<br>c<br>d<br>e<br>f<br>g</div>
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
Load that code in
Firefox 1.0.6 or lower, and it will
overlap this
very same paragraph: although
overflow is declared as unmistakably
visible, and sensibility suggests it should rather
adapt the layer height to its contents, yet Firefox shows the contents as spanning
outside the container (and that this behavior would have been "correct", will be challenged promptly).
Visible accordingly to Firefox - and with rest in peace for
observations like "add display:block; to the style of your span and width and height will be rendered
correctly (...) Read w3c to find out how CSS should
really be rendered".
I am not here to
invent a
thesis I am not paid for: I rather
contend the glorification of idealized
theorems that are sported and
lectured with punctilious and
ultimate terminologies (nothing
less than:
rendered correctly as it really should be - go read the w3c it says it), and that
yet once probed do
not stand the
trial of facts - however you flavor or slant them.
Of course, it is also said: as the
W3C states,
leave out the height declaration and the "odd" behavior will disappear.
I kindly
return the observation: once an
overflow declaration has been stated altogether with an
height, observing the height and
yet interpreting the
specific & specified overflow command as a request to reproduce the
default behavior you'd
already have in
absence of the overflow command, sounds as an unwarranted additional
license to span beyond the boundaries, and is
equivalent to make the overflow instruction
impotent and as if it weren't, and yet it is; so that what the W3C is selling us, is the
authorization to act illogically:
«Thou that givest whores indulgences to sin»
(Shakespeare, Henry VI)When two
conflicting statements coexist, the ensuing rendering behavior qualifies its worth inasmuch as it produces the most
sensible of the possible outcomes rather than electing
precisely the most
unlikely among the
possible alternatives, and then beckoning for the
laud of the courtier.
If that is the way the W3C means to couple overflows with height, the bug is either in the browser or in the W3C
specification itself, for Firefox behavior makes no sense while respecting a
clearly senseless rule, and
not surprisingly then Opera and IE opt to stretch the height.
Omit the
overflow statement in order not to stretch, rather than omitting the height in order to stretch: because it is
the height that is made for its overflow specification, not the overflow specification for its height.
When an overflow is
stated, the height belongs to it - and can't be
viceversa without losing rationality in the process.
So I do not mean that «
how CSS should really be rendered» is something that does not exist: it does, and it is the
opposite of how this renders.
«
How CSS should really be rendered» does
not necessarily coincide with how the
W3C said it should, but it
does coincide with what
reason says.
What a scandal, isn't it? Isn't it
really outrageous that also
idols should bow to reason, and risk twilight?
Summum ius summa iniuria the latins (who knew a lot about rules abidance, since they gave rules to the whole of the world for 2000 years) said; that is,
Extreme Compliance With Law Yields Extreme Injustice.
An obtuse law
rightly deserves no implementation, and the zealous applause of the obtuse
only.
What kind of neo-
scholasticism are we teaching to our web communities? They respect rules
without any critic spirit whatsoever,
fanatically and
simply because they have been made rules; and yet it was Walt Whitman who admonished:
«To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little.»What
fantasy, and what
self-confidence, shall our programmers nurture if they learn to worship statements just because they are turned official and they
detect no longer those that have turned rotten, and if they learn to revere
wrong solutions simply because they have been lent by an
authority?
They scream: but we need the
standards!
When you need a standard so badly that you are ready to swallow
whatever as long as it can be called a
standard, you're setting the level of your standards at the height of the
beggar.
They are cannon fodder for moral phishing
* .
«Cerf said he often meets young people pursuing radical ideas in technology because "they don't know you can't do that, so they go and do it."
"And there's nothing more refreshing than that (can do) attitude," he said.»
(Vinton Cerf, source)Firefox and
Netscape even at their last current version (Firefox 1.0.6, Netscape nothing less than a staggering round version number
8) fail at such a triviality, and yet their engine is
acclaimed as fully compliant- fully compliant with
what?
And given the list above, fully secure, sure: but against
what threat?
So, this is why I do not understand the IE blaming for all. Not because I have any
ideological stance in it, but simply because it
defies logic.
And I can't live with a persuasion that defies logic, sponsoring it around. I and Henry Miller cannot champion a despoiled
illusion, least of all with
theophanic confidence.
All browsers have problems, no matter how this remark may sound
anathema to those whose idea of
having no problems consists in saying they have them
not.
Firefox
is a
great browser to my eyes despite its shortcomings; Netscape
is a
great browser to my eyes despite its shortcomings; Opera
is a
great browser to my eyes despite its shortcomings; and
so IE
is, despite its own.
Mozilla is good: acknowledging it is such or even excellent as it is, does
not imply any predicament about any
necessity to trash along other things that are, to say the least, at least
as good as it is.
Because the good reputation of a product cannot feed upon the
predation of the reputation of the others via slandering,
if it wants to be
reputable indeed.
Of course, it can
legitimately be objected that "no one" ever claimed that any browser would have been "
fully" compliant, but simply that this one is more relativistically compliant or more relativistically secure than this other. Which, by the way, is
at times gracefully conceded
only when the incoming
blundering is sensed as
fatal, and the upheld position no longer defensible with impunity.
Possibly we
meant saying that. It is
well within the range of the possible and of the real both.
But did we say really
that, which we meant to say?
Although I do not like providing linking notoriety to some type of blatantly absurd websites, yet we have online stuff like this:
http://toastytech.com/evil/index.html
Yet, I still find
not incompatible mentioning them: because it is by seeing
them that it can be
better ascertained who's who and who is, at least relatively, right or wrong. I think that that link speaks for itself and discredits itself enough, and tells of the dangers of those who trail along however with less "
enthusiasms".
True, that is an example taken out from the
edges.
But as such, it is
symptomatic of an
overall mood and of where such a mood may lead, and
indeed leads, astray many - though by
lesser degrees. But you don't need to be a
sworn vestal of The Golden Idol in order to be among those who loiter around its all the same infamous porch.
As a person who
loves programming, I say that those type of extreme approaches
do not belong though they strut around exactly
as if they would.
I can assure you that although you may be a person who can see things also under a relativistic point of view,
yet there are others who are
not like you.
Evil is
real, and so many times it is the one residing in the beholder who ascribes it to the beheld.
There exist
indeed persons who believe in the existence of that "fully" whose existence others may so legitimately contend. I am addressing the former, not the latter. For the former
do exist and are
almost legion, and the latter need me not.
If in our ranks, whichever browser we prefer, we can find a
common ground, it is in
mutual respect regardless of the paths we walk: if we are
really concerned with enhancing professionalism in our field, those type of ideological approaches must go
challenged, and
not undisturbed. They must go rejected, resisted, and condemned openly by
us all - and not
tacitly overlooked as
insignificant.
For if they are, something they
have to
signify: or they would have been
not, correct?
We cannot
sponsor adherence to the standards in the same line where we want their impassible and olympian objectivity complied with and
yet we also allow to go unresisted those entirely subjective grapes of wrath. Many of the complaints against Internet Explorer we hear are like life accordingly to Shakespeare:
"a tale told by an idiot -- full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"If we
want the
standards, we can't
allow the furors.
If we
allow the furors, ours or of the others, we can't lay any longer any credible claim to the good health of the
standards.
Once entered the relativistic playground a few suggest, then IE is neither worse nor better than many other browsers, not even comparatively.
It's an excellent browser; come on, that it is not an excellent browser is like two plus two yielding four for Bertrand Russell, "something that only very very experienced philosophers would feel like contending": it is something that only
very very experienced and very very sophisticated developers would challenge
too strongly and
so loudly.
And as far as security is concerned, the
eweek headlines previously mentioned speak for themselves sound and clear enough.
There was a line in a Raymond Chandler short story:
"Safe. A word that in my business we never use."Those who use the terminologies of
security referring to a browser as more or less secure than another, simply miss the point:
secure, that is a word that in our business
does not exist. So we cannot even use it as a
solid criterion you see.
Faith, Hope, Charity
* . Or:
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.
We
Program. We
Bugfix. We
Patch.
That is all what our job has always been precisely about. We are such stuff as
bugs are made on, and our
little program is rounded with
threats.
If it has invariably been so
since ever, it must have always been so for a
reason, and
not because of a
curse under whose spell we all cower and cringe - from the vilest and the worst till the brightest and the best alike.
Fixing is not an
exogenous, alien entity, stealthily penetrated within the programming body by a careless negligence or by the malice of invading bacteria that we
ought to have been diligent enough to exterminate earlier and
yet we didn't.
When you program, you are bound to make
assumptions. It is the only way we humans can think and work: we make
presumptions with hypothesis, and
assumptions about facts; and this is our
daily bread, to
consummate.
The bug is not a famished chicanery prowling somewhere
in the assumption: the bug
is the assumption itself.
For all assumptions at the end of the day either prove themselves inadequate, or wear off to give way to the corvee of the assumptions for the next day. The remains of the day, what is left behind, is a streaming trail of litter and debris, as the cargo
sails on.
Metabolism implies
catabolism, and the handiwork that was made out of heavenly
mud, creates handiwork that leave behind
refuse. After the party, comes the
hangover; and after the conquest and the empire remains the smouldering of the
bivouacs.
And so, why: is that
that much surprising to you, sir? Did you ever manage to live otherwise?
«I am part of that power that alone works evil
But always engenders good.
The spirit I am that endlessly denies.
And rightly too: for all that comes to birth
Is fit for overthrow, as nothing worth.
(...) Thus will man run, I trust, where ruin lies
And so with matter share the general wreck.»
(J.W.Goethe, Faust)So, a flaw in IE does
not subtract from the reputation of IE but in the land of those (not necessarily you who read!) who believe that
security can be
attained once and for all: and that the fact IE has not attained
that definitive security of
Wonderland can be blamed on it endlessly and at our
leisure and would even warrant the most abusive languages.
Whereas the fact that
Mozilla has not succeeded as well into attaining that
very same security once and for all should, on the contrary, be either condoned or go hypocritically unnoticed: or, perhaps, that it should be allowed as
proper the claim that such definitive a security that we know cannot
inherently exist, which isn't but a
chimaera,
yet in the supremely and very special case of the browser
X now exists, is at most a
near miss, and goes around grazing in the Pastures of Heaven wherefrom it can be admired -
freeware.
Some like it hot, and some
believe that.
Even worst, as recently as November 2005 a
vnunet.com article reported an IE vulnerability and linked a page upon
which the full test of this unpatched flaw could be run.
computerterrorism.com «
Remote System Access» alleged bug
I tested the vulnerability on that
very same day with
IE and
Firefox both, as many times as
three times per browser.
Not only it
just crashed the browser open window and did not launch my local
calc application, as it should have done since it was declared a «Remote System Access» flaw fit to seize such commands, but when I tried it on Firefox, it
crashed Firefox three times as well.
And
yet see what is the advice given to bypass it:
Use «
Firefox or Opera»; false conclusion, it
crashes them too.
Either the above recommendation is the outcome of incompetence, or it is
intentional disinformation by hired Anonymous «Security Researchers»
Inc. because you cannot profess as a
competent and
sponsored solution alternative browsers when they are
affected as well.
Evidence:
Firefox freezing and crashing gloriously at that very
same test, clogging with a canvas blanked by an endlessly loading popup the test itself launches. It will eventually crash, a few seconds after the screenshot was taken.
And yet, its use gets «
recommended» as a
solution! Question now is:
why?
A browser which is secure does not exist. It
never will.
We are after a ghost that every step we take
forward at it, takes a step
backward from us.
And it is in the evolutive nature of technology itself that such omniscient security will never exist: every move forward in technology entails a potential
new exploit. Where would it ever end but
nowhere? It is a
self fulfilling prophesy, it is a recursive function that
feeds itself and never stops.
Full security belongs to the grave. Secure, safe, smooth, tranquil: nice ideals. As Jean Jaques Rousseau once wrote:
"Also the Greeks who were locked in the Cyclop's cave lived a tranquil existence, as they waited for their turn to be devoured."You can be tranquil and secure
only as long as you aren't attacked,
and not one instant longer.
And any browser that enjoys 80% of the share, is
used 80% of the times, is
exposed 80% of the times, and thus will get
attacked 80% of the times an attack is carried out.
As for the standards, there will be one glorious day in our future when, though me and you will have ceased to be since long, the jaguar will lay peacefully beside the lamb: the happy denizens of those ages will deal with hydrogen cars, Enterprise spaceships, and will relish the balms of
DOM 181.
The browsers that still implement the 36 months old
DOM 180 should not be treated as uncompliant backwashes, laying at the same time a valid claim to fairness of judgement.
The
standards, we all want them: and in a vast degree we have them. I don't see in IE any real problem. It never prevented me from viewing a 2005 anno domini website, as neither Mozilla did.
With IE and Mozilla both, I do just whatever it pleases me doing on
Amazon, on
Yahoo, on
Google, on
CNN, on
Netscape portals, and on whatever else is
big enough online to be considered
tough to parse and
part of the standards at the same time.
Internet Explorer does its job
magnificently and perfectly at every one of them, and
so Mozilla performs over there. So, what was all this ado for nothing about?
Because the net is not made upon
void abstract rules, but upon
really surfed websites.
I cannot accept that, as so frequently we see, teenagers (or no longer such, which is
worse) who want to implement for a silly blog of theirs their
whimsical and experimental css (that of course they regard nothing less than
mission critical for the
success of their
quite promising start up inaugurated half a day ago), would end up placing
more importance upon the blooming of their
apprentice wizardship's Css experiments rather than in the
content management of their otherwise
empty and utterly meaningless blogs, and thenceforth place in their useless blogs
slandering comments on IE believing such comments are justified and even
endorsed. We can't value cosmetics more than contents.
Being the matter
so, those guys should be told
so, and informed via truth and not via furors about where they
really stand, rather than letting them go away unpunished, with the convenient assumption that their
frugal venture
failures aren't to blame upon themselves, and with the
reputation of such fabulous a browser as
Internet Explorer by
all accounts is,
plundering upon its renown in the name of the
nothing they had to say - but that so eagerly they wanted to see adorned with the
most exquisite frills of the
most improbable of the vanguard Css that will
ever be.
In the name of the lord of the surfing flies and of the standards, and in the name of the most gracious
and frivolous Css, there are also websites that
prevent access to Internet Explorer 6 complaining that it would have been "not compliant" and
redirect it
forcibly elsewhere to
alternative products. You cannot browse with what
you choose: and
they who feel so, often even dare consider themselves adamant apostles of the
Open Source.
If at our times somebody is able to script such a mark up or such a Css that one has to
prevent access to a
last generation browser as IE6 is, the right deduction is that he or she doesn't know how to write mark up or Css.
Because it is not the
formalistic perfection, but the
actual accessibility of the mark up what makes the
value of the mark up.
The internet is all about
access for its deepest nature is that of being an immense searchable
database, and
everybody knows
the most uncompliant browsers of all are
search engines robots: so why not disqualifying them in the first place? I find or miss
you exactly by
them.
Given the
idle nature of those documents, we would be
missing nothing, and
sparing our time would have been a
better tip and a better gift than splattering before our faces the
download page of
another last generation browser, which does
the very same thing as the former.
We have by now
already so
many cross browser options for graphical fantasy and presentation urges, that declaring
dearth amidst such wealth, and that one is
bound to prevent
generation five accesses, means somebody has still to work out
why we publish
online, and why rather than the tradition ridden and honored personal
diary, we switched to
blogs.
If somebody finds
consequential rejecting 80% of the surfers alleging it's made for the sake of the
internet and of the standards because a client platform cannot
parse a silly css fixed layer of theirs where they
still value
Geocities watermarks as
wondrous feats worth such
invasive an incapacitation, or because it cannot capitalize that so important first letter of that three lines paragraph where they caption the pic of their friend with a can of beer in hand, then they worry about access without reasons: in fact, the real reason access to their sites should be prevented, is that there was
nothing worth seeing for whatever
human in command of a
browser.
Besides, the
ideological stance underlying the approach is
instantaneously exposed, as soon as that mark up, revealed to an
allowed browser, in nearly all instances
discloses not one single line that would have been problematic to Internet Explorer to
any extent: it becomes
now clear that the
Internet Explorer that will
ever satisfy them, is
simply the
Internet Explorer that will
never be.
We are in the land of pure
nonsense and of
cold war hatred, and not at all in the court of standards deference: because
standards predicate the public and not the
confidential nature of
online resources.
So why performing a deed that
assassinates the standards, declaring that we are doing it because this is what the standards meant?
On year 2005 a website that excludes a generation 5 browser does not betray problems with the
browser, but with the
owner.
Additionally, we deal with
self referential worlds:
Css websites, that link to other
Css websites, all dealing with
Css techniques, triggering a
tautology that at each round
freshens up the reasons of its own discontents.
It is not that they could not achieve cross browsers compatibility: a
banal usage of ECMA compliant
javascript would grant that.
It is rather that they want to achieve this compatibility either
via Css, or not at all: which proves either that they wonder why the internet couldn't be turned into the playground where their
only talent and expertise (
css) rules, or that compatibility has
never been their real concern in the first place although they insist it is and they insist
excluding generation 5 fully valid navigational platforms.
Of course, they
still argue that the reason we should want compatibility
only Css-driven and with no javascript support, is that javascript could be
disabled.
But I can't see why this reasoning imagines fearsome and
unconvincing environments where javascript goes disabled, but conveniently ignores that not only the
very same option panels from where javascript can be disabled, are the very same where
Css too can be disabled, but that at times disabling Css is
infinitely easier than disabling javascript because it does
not even require accessing
remote option
panels but just the
handy drop down
menus of the toolbar.
In fact, on Firefox:
And on Netscape:
The same no longer Css enriched bulleted list that may ensue and still be used, is the
same bulleted list that ensues and can still be used without javascript support too.
And, as an aside: it is
no excuse that
a few of these bloggers or webmasters may be teenagers, and therefore dismissed as irrelevant.
Most of them actually aren't, and those among them who are teenagers are
as abusive as adults can ever be, and so must have had either
teachers or the absence thereof:
none of which sanctions the irrelevancy of letting verbal violence and mental bias go
indefinitely overlooked under
age considerations, being such the perfect recipe to generate physically violent and ideologically unflinching
adults when what Sartre called «
The Age Of Murder» comes of age.
Because as Dostoevsky knew, this enterprise is «
not altogether valueless since from
adolescents are made up the
generations».
And it is from the milieu that we
breed now, and from what we
are today, that we shall forge and obtain or have to search for the programmers and the internet of
tomorrow.
What is there that made
so many developers believe that the
Css formalistic layout conformation (so called
compliance with the standards) is more essential than the
contents it is meant to envelop and serve, or that Css can be an objective in
itself worth the contents it lacks?
The Css paradigm
clearly predicates since inception that the importance is set
the other way round: separate the contents from the format so to exalt the leading role of the
former: that is, of the
{contents}.
Not of the format.
That separation was meant to herald the
ancillary role of Css, not to usher it into the throne chambers.
The desired objective is to convey the
contents, and to furnish increasingly means for conveying them.
Being this the aim,
no obligation can be derived or should be inferred
as long as this
real purpose goes
fulfilled.
That is, not
even the predicated
separation is to be mistaken as paramount and foremost any longer, provided
its final destination is attained.
The intendment is not of juggling css vials in the hollow, and of trading layers inside ampoules: if that would have been the intention, then the only
truly and fully compliant document surely fit to pass the
grim test of the w3c parsers in an exemplary manner, is the
blank scroll.
TO THE SECOND PART
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