"For Managers of World Wide Web Sites" at
<http://webserver.cpg.com/>

PATRICK T. COLEMAN,  Staff Editor


Developers of the World Unite

Frustrated by having to design different Web sites to  be viewed
with incompatible browsers, thousands of developers are now
fighting  back to collectively promote standards for the World
Wide Web.

What started out as 12 angry developers bemoaning browser
incompatibility has  ballooned--in little more than one
month--into a group of 4,200 Web  professionals collectively
promoting the emerging Web standards recommended by  the
<http://www.w3.org/World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The group, 
calling itself <http://www.webstandards.org/the Web Standards 
Project (WSP), says the problem is so serious that up to one
quarter of the  time and expense that goes into developing a Web
site is allocated toward  ensuring it will be viewable with both
Microsoft Corp. and Netscape Communications Corp. browsers in 
their various versions. "We estimate that [browser
incompatibility] adds  about 25% of the time and money involved
in development," says George  Olsen, WSP Project Leader. "That's
time better spent making better  content."



The main push from the WSP is to get both Microsoft and Netscape
to fully  support the W3C's recommendations in upcoming releases
(5.0) of Internet  Explorer (IE) and Navigator. Specifically, the
group hopes to persuade the  browser vendors to fully support
Cascading Style Sheets 1 (CSS1), Document  Object Model (DOM) and
eXtensible Markup Language (XML).

In general, the Microsoft and Netscape browsers have received
good marks for  their support of W3C specifications. Both
companies are active members of the  W3C and offer a great deal
of input toward what should be included in the  organization's
working groups. "Every organization that contributes toward  our
specifications does, in fact, do their best to implement what has
been  worked out in a W3C group," says Josef Dietl, head of
communications for  the W3C. "But, as a matter of fact, life in a
company is not always  dictated by the W3C."



The problem is, in some cases, when a specification has been
recommended by  the W3C, it comes at a point in the browser's
production cycle that prohibits  the inclusion of the
recommendation. For example, CSS1 became a formal W3C 
recommendation in December 1996, two-thirds of the way through
Internet  Explorer's 18-month production schedule. Despite this
poor timing, Microsoft was  able to include 94% of the
recommendation in Internet Explorer 4.0 when it was  released six
months later.



A similar situation is developing around the DOM specification,
which became  a proposed recommendation on August 18 after the
first beta of Internet Explorer  5.0 had already shipped. "It
looks like it's not going to be a  recommendation before we get
beta two or maybe even get the final release of IE  5 out the
door," says David Wascha, product manager for the platforms 
marketing group at Microsoft.



Even when a specification has been proposed by a W3C working
group, it  doesn't guarantee it will become a formal
recommendation. When XML's working  group released the proposed
specifications to Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director, he  sent back
the specs, requiring that certain changes be made. "This was a 
draft that everyone in the industry thought was going to be
final, and all the  different vendors started to implement it,
and then there were changes made at  the last minute," Wascha
says. "This is why standards can't hold up  our product cycle. We
do the best job that we can to implement the standards in 
whatever state they happen to be in that coincide with our
product  cycle."



The fact of the matter is it's not the lack of specification
support that  causes major headaches for developers, but the
unique bells and whistles  associated with each browser. A common
complaint among Web site designers is  that each vendor supports
a different scripting language. Microsoft supports  JScript,
while Netscape supports JavaScript. Another difficulty for
developers  comes in trying to add unique functionality to a site
using proprietary features  such as Dynamic HTML (DHTML). When
Dan Livingston, Web architect for Clear Ink  Corp., a Web site
development company based in Walnut Creek, CA, and a member of 
the WSP, tried to design a site called Palette Man, which uses a
feature known as  "layers," he quickly learned of the
browser-compatibility issue.  "If I wrote it for Netscape, it
wouldn't work in IE, and if I wrote it for  IE, it wouldn't work
in Netscape," Livingston says.



Livingston describes Palette Man as an online experiment in
color. Visitors  to the site can test how different colors look
in contrast to one another. By  moving a mouse over a small color
field containing combinations of red, green  and blue, the user
can choose to highlight different colors. Each successive  color
chosen by the user is displayed along side the previous choice,
offering a  quick and easy contrast. As many as four colors, or
layers, can be viewed at the  same time and the hexadecimal
number of each is given for reference. "I  wanted a lot of things
to happen on one page and the only way to do that was to  use
DHTML," Livingston says.



He didn't want to have to code separate sites for each browser,
so instead,  he added a JavaScript method, called eval, which
triggers a  prespecified command according to whichever browser
accesses the site. The extra  coding it would have taken to
homogenize the site without the help of  eval could have easily
cost Clear Ink a 25% increase in manpower and  money, Livingston
says. Even if the WSP had been successful in getting browser 
vendors to fully comply with the W3C's specifications, however,
this problem  would still have occurred because Palette Man was
created using DHTML, which is  not yet a W3C specification.



Gartner Group Inc., a research firm based in Stamford, CT,
recommends  developers looking to design applications for both
Internet Explorer and  Navigator use JavaScript 1.1 because it is
roughly equivalent to the  implementations supported in Internet
Explorer 4.0, Navigator 3.0 and  ECMAscript, the standardization
of JavaScript/JScript recommended by the European Computer
Manufacturer's Association  (ECMA). "What we are suggesting to
our clients is don't standardize on  one particular browser,"
says Dan Barnick, industry analyst with the  Gartner Group. "Keep
an open mind to the idea of supporting both browsers  when
developing and develop with the least common dominator in mind so
that  there are no support issues."



Today, developers are left having to test each site individually
to determine  what works with the major browsers. Not only do
they test for incompatibilities  between Internet Explorer and
Navigator, they also test for problems between  different
versions and platforms. Two major concerns are monitor and color 
matching systems. For example, a Web page tends to look darker
when viewed using  a machine running Windows versus, say, an
<http://www.apple.com/Apple  Computer Inc. Macintosh computer.
So, an image that looks fine on a Mac  could be difficult to see
on a PC running Windows. This forces Web site  designers to
constantly test and adjust their work. Typically, this is done 
through trial and error, testing each page on different platforms
with different  browsers. "I have five different browsers on my
Mac and another three on my  PC," the WSP's Olsen says. "Someone
has to sit down and fire up each  browser and fire up each page
and go through each page to make sure it displays  and functions
properly."



One alternative is to use the free online testing software that
is currently  available, such as the Center for Applied Special
Technology (CAST)'s Bobby 3.0 and AtWeb Inc.'s Web Site Garage.
Bobby 3.0's main  purpose is to test the accessibility of Web
sites for people with disabilities,  but a browser-compatibility
test feature was added to lure developers who  wouldn't
necessarily consider accessibility issues. "Bobby checks the HTML
 and highlights tags that may not be recognized in a different
browser,"  says David Clark, technical lead for Bobby 3.0 and
CAST's Webmaster.  "Browser compatibility is a way to draw people
in that would never  ordinarily think about accessibility."



AtWeb offers two services designed to overcome compatibility
problems. The  first is Web Site Garage, a free online service
that performs seven diagnostic  tests on the design of a Web
site, including browser compatibility. The company  says it
checks for compatibility with Internet Explorer 3.0 and 4.0,
Navigator  2.0, 3.0 and 4.0, and America Online 3.0. The
evaluator identifies each tag and  attribute and includes a
warning in the line of the code where it finds a  compatibility
problem.



The second service is Browser Snapshot. "You can just cycle
through and  look at what your site would actually look like
[using different  browsers]," says Lark Dunham, director of
product marketing for AtWeb's Web  Site Garage. This alleviates
another headache faced by developers. If they need  to test for
browser and version compatibility, then they want to do it from
one  machine rather than a series of Macs and PCs. This is an
area in which Internet  Explorer does not perform well. Whenever
the latest version of Internet Explorer  is loaded onto a
desktop, the previous version is automatically removed. There  is
no way to run Internet Explorer 3.0 and 4.0 on the same machine.
In effect,  this means developers must test different browser
versions using different  desktops. "Microsoft has forced you to
upgrade so you can't have 3.0 and  4.0 running on the same
machine," Dunham says. But, according to AtWeb,  Browser Snapshot
allows a site to be viewed in 18 different formats based on 
screen size and platform--including Internet Explorer 3.0 and
4.0. The company  charges $9.99 per onetime use or $99 per year.



In response, Microsoft's Wascha says, "We are well aware that
people are  upset with that and we are taking steps to alleviate
that problem. I can't speak  to anything specific right now."



On the Bright Side



Clearly, Web developers are frustrated with having to design
specifically for  the two major browsers. They continue to be the
true casualties in the browser  war. However, the struggle for
browser compatibility does have a silver lining.  Competition
between Microsoft and Netscape will undoubtedly push innovation
in  browser functionality faster than if only one standard
browser were available.  Steve Nelson, vice president of Clear
Ink, says, "I don't think it's ever  going to end, and in a way I
hope not. It's a hassle for us, but this is how  standards
evolve. We are no longer worried like we were two and half years
ago  about the support of tables. This is the way you get
innovations."



In terms of the W3C recommendations, it appears that Microsoft
and Netscape  will continue to work toward supporting the
specifications at their own pace.  The WSP will try to help speed
up the process as well. "We're not here to  spank browser makers
for making innovations," Olsen says. "Our point  is they should
be supporting core standards and then they are free to add 
whatever else on top of it."