[conspire] Browser 'Wars'

[Rick Moen]

Correcting a mistakenly typed word (correct in my head, but my fingers
substituted something else):

> I wish, however, that most Web developers were not under the delusion
> that they are, and should be, in full control of the remote user's user
> interface, and would stick to reasonable content with semantically
> meaningful content and tasteful styling, leaving all the baroque crap
             ^^^^^^^
> and the gratuitous JavaScript dependencies on the floor.

Should be 'markup'.


Here's an 'Web developer' intelligence test:  Jahn Rentmeister's 1996 
classic essay '"This page optimized for ..." - arguing with customers'.
I saved that essay from oblivion when Rentmeister's hosting vanished, and 
continue to archive it with his blessing.

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Web/opti.html

It is what we fogies call a 'timeless' essay, which is to say it made
some very fundamental and deep points, fifteen years ago, about how to
screw up Web sites by doing particular stupid things to members of the
public -- customers -- that ultimately alienate them, such that they
suddenly remember they'd rather be somewhere else.  And then the company
that wants customers, who pays the Web developer to help them with
customers, suddenly has fewer customers, and maybe eventually less
desire to hire that Web developer.

Fifteen years later, Rentmeister's essay looks extremely 1996, and some
of his examples (and all of the software mentioned) are ancient, but, 
amazingly enough, _the exact key problem he discusses persists_. 

The reason I call that a 'Web developer' intelligence test, or Pons
Asinorum (Bridge of Asses[1]) is that I've gotten whiney e-mails, about
that archived page, from hundreds of soi-disant 'Web developers' over the 
years, trying to tell me that Rentmeister's views are irrelevant and
should be disregarded because they're ancient history.

This tells me that my correspondent is (1) stupid, and (2) almost
certainly part of the problem.

Fortunately, most Web developer brain damage can be largely mitigated at
the user end using relatively simple tools.  Thus my lecture.


[1] Pons Asinorum was a mediaeval term referring to a particular class
of problem, mostly math problems (and most often one based on Euclid's
fifth proposition), posed to aspiring students.  If the student couldn't
determine eventually that the problem was unsolvable, there was no point
in admitting him.