Michael Polák ( )
Přečteno 178782x, 23 komentářů, rubrika: (en) Archive

I definitely don't want to celebrate Czech MSN branch called Atlas for publishing irrational HTML... but let's see how their MSIE-optimized website looks like in Netscape 4.7 and Arachne 1.64...

URL of the test page is msn.atlas.cz. It is not really Microsoft owned portal, but it's owner, company named Atlas, is cooperating very tightly with Microsoft, they became members MSN, and generaly their task is to create internet portal, which is as incompatible with other browsers than MSIE, as it is possible without beeing incompatible with MSIE itself ;-)

Anyway: see screenshot demonstrating how Netscape 4.7 for Linux renders this page. There are obvious serious layouts problems, simillar to problems which early versions of Arachne experienced on more complex HTML pages with tables. It's obvious Netscape was heavily dependent on Netscape-optimized HTML, and once webmasters check their pages only with MSIE (which is surely favourite secret sexual fantasy of Bill Gates ;-), Netscape is lost. This process has already started, at least in many parts of Internet outside USA.

Now let's visit this page with Arachne 1.64. The results are far from being excellent; however, Arachne seems to have generaly less problems rendering the page correctly, than Netscape! This is result of Arachne HTML engine being trained to process tons of stuff, which was never ever tested with this engine before. Any software (or organism...), which was developed in safe enviroment of total market domination, is very likely to fail in even slightly modified enviroment. Such software was never really developed to fit user needs - instead of that, users were modified to meet requirements of the software.

Of course, Mozilla is probably going to be heavily armed for this defensive battle against MSIE... but this doesn't meant that other browsers are without chance. Amount of allocated memory doesn't say much about program's ability to process data, which were never intended to be processed with it...

Note: you probably won't be able to visit discussed page with older versions of Arachne, because of cookie and redirection related bug, which is fixed in Arachne release 1.64.