[Fsf-friends] [Fwd]: please comply with standards

[Mahesh T. Pai]

Harish Narayanan said on Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 06:29:28PM -0400,:

 > Probably they meant, "has been tested using" where they said

We  lawyers have  a  saying to  the  effect that  we  cannot go  about
breaking open peoples' heads to find that what they intend. We need to
gather intentions from words acts and deeds.

 > for". Because I don't run my  monitor on 800x600, have java, or use
 > IE, but I can get around the site quite comfortably.

My mail has nothing to do with resolution. It has every thing to do
with following sensible standards.

And I  use larger fonts here,  so that I  can read from a  distance of
three feet from the monitor. At  that size this page, and almost every
page hosted by nic, looks ugly.

And javascript removes  control from my hands. I  want only one window
open  at a  time;  and have  twenty  or thirty  tabs  open in  Mozilla
firefox  at a  time.  It is  irritating when  a  page opens  in a  new
window. I have disabled permission for pages to open new windows.

 > This is where  I have a problem. W3C  standards compliance does not
 > necessarily imply ease of use, accessibility or anything like that.

W3C standards is  not merely HTML 4.01. It goes  much beyond that. W3C
has standards for  CSS. CSS prescribes standards for  visual and aural
styles.

 > can find  plenty of well  formed markup, fully  standards compliant
 > websites that are absolutely horrendous to use.

That is a human error. For example, look at the fsf.org.in pages. They
are  W3C html compliant.  But use  tables to  control layout.  That is
deprecated by the  W3C. W3C recommends that people  use stylesheets to
control  layout,   and  suggests  that  tables  be   used  to  display
data. FSF's  pages pass  the html 4.01  `strict' dtd when  run through
W3C's HTMLtidy;  but, the trouble comes when  people with disabilities
try to use them. 
 
 > are equally competent groups that work outside the realm of the W3C
 > [  http://whatwg.org/  ]  involved  in  coming  up  with  standards
 > themselves

Thanks for this info. I need to look into that organisation. 
 
 > that work at a (hopefully higher) different pace than the W3C and

But would this lead to multiplicity of standards? 
   
 > in tune with  rate of evolution of browser  technology. There is no
 > real  point to  any of  this, except,  compliance with  W3C doesn't
 > automatically make it "good" and lack of compliance doesn't make it
 > "bad".


 > Of course. Ads for specific proprietary technology are totally 
 > unacceptable. It's just, for what it's worth, some slightly offset css 
 > positioning (when not viewed in IE) and the evil ad apart, this site is 
 > quite clean and navigable.

My _main_ issue  is that the NIC's pages carry  a message which either
deliberately or unwittingly misleading; and the layman will think that
other browsers are not supported.

With footers  like this, when  you try _selling_ non-M$  software; the
first question you will face is `whether it will display foo.gov.in or
bar.nic.in pages, because NIC says  that their pages are optimised for
eyeeee browsers'.

Got the point? 


-- 
         Mahesh T. Pai    <<>>   http://paivakil.port5.com
Money can't buy love, but it sure gets you a great bargaining
position.
- From the Tao of Programming