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Why Browsers Haven't Standardized
Page 5 —
Decisions, Decisions
Well, the people at UltraBrowserCorp have a tough choice to make. On the one hand,
they can rip out their existing code and replace it with something that will
match the new behavior required by the specification. While this would
certainly
be the best choice in terms of standards compliance, it will change the
way the browser renders the pages that were already created by cutting-edge
designers, because newer versions of the browser will perform
differently than the "old" version (released only a month ago). The
designers who
created pages under the "old" specification are the early adopters of UBC's
features, which means they probably prefer UBC's products. Changing the
browser's behavior on them is not exactly a wise PR move - these are the
people that UBC can least afford to annoy!
On the other hand, if UBC's browser has an implementation in violation
of a published specification, they will almost certainly get blasted for
that, too.
Finally, they could instruct their representative in the Working Group to
vote against the draft specification becoming a full W3C Recommendation. But
then they'd be accused of blocking progress and innovation on the Web just
to protect their market share.
Not exactly a win-win situation for UltraBrowserCorp. And yet what's the
alternative? They could choose not to implement any standard until after
it has become a full W3C Recommendation, of course. But that option has its
own negative side effects as well.
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