posted 20 years ago
This is not an anti-Microsoft post but instead a pro-Truth post.
IE's addiction dumbs us down.
"Dumbs" meaning getting us away from the W3C recommendations for a better Web World that programmers can write code for.
Like a drug dealer, Microsoft tweaks their web browser to be more "friendly" to some users while 'breaking the law'. And making more addicts in the process.
I first discovered this many years ago
at the beginning of the MP3 craze, when I was (apparently) the first one to upload MP3 files to the web servers of two ISPs then. When I noticed that Netscape 4.x was displaying as text (gibberish of course) what was in reality a binary file, I decided to telnet to port 80 of the server and issue a HEAD HTTP command for one of the MP3 files. I was not too surprised to find out that the "Content-type:" header field was set to "text/plain"! Apparently it was too early in the MP3 revolution for them to have figured this one out.
It took me many more telnets to port 80 and many more phone calls and careful explanations to both ISPs to convince them that the problem was that they were serving the MP3 files with the wrong MIME type. As you know, "Content-type:" is one of the fields of the HTTP header returned as a response to the HEAD command request.
IE still doesn't behave correctly. Shame on Bill!
PS: Breaking News: Microsoft buys W3C and all its standards and web assets!