Perceived Crimes Against Technology
Written by admin on May 5, 2009
A standard that interworks with nothing is hardly a standard worth having; it is rather more like a fetish. A useful standard is used by two or more agents and agreement on the standard is central to their interworking. To misuse or poorly implement a standard is to handle that standard roughly, if it is handled at all.
Within the world of the built Web, there are some well-known examples of rough handling. Mis-use or failure to use the Content-Type HTTP header, thus mis-representing the contents of Web documents is one. Ill-formed or invalid content inside XML and XHTML documents is another; so-called “Tag Soup” is the equivalent crime for poorly formed HTML documents. Use of features that erode the maximum utility of Web pages, such as dynamic animation of div and span tags, which can ruin accessibility, is a more contentious example. And then there are aberrant, or at least highly novel phenomena, such as the MARQUEE tag.
Such issues cross all aspects of the Web: the software tools that manage the disposition of content, like browsers and servers, the creation of content itself, the uses to which browser-like tools are put, and the behaviour of users and technologists as they handle the tools in an attempt to meet their needs. For example, is it really appropriate to build forms and menu application interfaces out of HTML? HTML is a standard with at best rudimentary forms and menu support, a standard intended for HyperText documents, not record management.
The beauty and simplicity of well-argued standards, or even imperfect ones, and the consequent software is not well served by these kinds of exceptions. In some conservative sense, neither is any kind of Greater Order served. Such exceptions are not crimes, however. Crimes can only be perpetuated against people and against those with anthropomorphic traits, like pets. What, then, are we to think about such rough-handling exceptions?
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