After spending many many many many - opps got stuck there - hours this last week trying to make a simple website xhtml 1.0 compatible across major browsers I have come to the point of wonder why we need to waste all this time.

The Story:

I managed to get the site looking good and working correctly under FireFox.  Then tried in IE and boom, there were several issues.  Fixed those and it rendered well on both, so I then tried Opera... Yep, looked like garbage.  One of the things I found was that for SOME reason Opera ads a margin or padding to their "form" tag on xhtml documents.  Setting that to zero solved that issue, but others still required more searching and fixing.

Now, I finally had a site that looked correctly in Opera, but when I checked, IE was whacked out.  This cycle continued hour after hour after hour after hour -- opps there I go again -- until I achieved a site that is xhtml 1.0 strict which happens to render correctly under these three browsers, however I am in fear to test them on any other browser ;)

We have had these battles as far back as I can remember with web development. It is not only that the standards are not implemented the same on all the browses, but that the standards themselves are flawed but it takes years to decades before anything gets changed.  This is flat out stupid!  Most people will be dead and buried before they get it right :)

Possible Answer:

Okay, that said, I am thinking that it is time to scrap the standards and even the browser and move on to something new.  Eeekk..  Yep, scrap it all and move on! 

Maybe it is time we take the good points we find in some of these standards and build something new.  For instance, a new application that is 100% compatible on all major platforms, allowing a form of website to be developed easily using more technology, where the final appearance is exactly what it is supposed to be and not just the browser's guess. Not hindered by "document" purists that believe it is all about documents and that the appearance it not important (or not too important).  The Real world, the appearance if very important along with functionality!

My first thoughts are that it would be great to have an application, a type of presentation virtual machine allowing very precise page designs.  Another major focus would be for input/output ability.  The HTML/Browser world is just about dead for the ability to use input/output devices such as mouse (scroll wheel, extra buttons, etc), tablets, touch screens, audio, printers, etc.  Would be nice to see something that gives more of an "application" type experience than a printed page type interface.

One main key to me at least, is to break out of the "browser" box and have an entirely new application without any legacy of the old browser world.  Would be great to have, if possible, two-way communications with the server, but may not be practical with firewalls and the likes.  Here, the primary focus is to come up with something new, using more of the technology sitting in our boxes, not just a text dump.

I am sure that if a group of people got together and thought it all out, they could come up with some ideas that would move us all into a new Internet Platform rather than just a browser application world.  Many people are connected on a 24/7 basis to the Internet, it is a shame that so little takes advantage of this!

People have to remember, they web as we know it, once did not exist, it was brought in by a simple file format and a special reader which later was know as the browser.  That does not just have to be history, it can happen again, but this time even better!

The main reason for this post is merely a reminder to myself, to give all this more thought in the near future.  It would be nice however, if a few others were interested and wanted to be involved.