Hi,

On Tue, Apr 13, 2004 at 09:26:59PM +0000, Ian Hickson wrote:

> > Speaking of "core teams" is misleading. It doesn't change the fact
> > that you need several dozens of developers and five years to create
> > a full-featured web browser that is terribly slow, implements only a
> > fraction of W3C standards, and is terribly buggy with others.
> 
> Yes; as I mentioned in another e-mail on this thread, this is the same
> as for other application plaforms, such as desktop GUIs (Win32, Gnome,
> MacOSX), macro-enabled office suites (OpenOffice, WordPerfect),
> database systems (DBase, Paradox), etc.
> 
> This is not really that surprising. It also takes hundreds of people
> to make a good video game these days. Or a high quality feature film.
> 
> Why is this particularly a problem?

Because one of the core features of the WWW has been the low entry cost
-- which in turn is the only possiblilty to ensure real plattform
independence.

MSIE supports one plattform, Opera four plus one or so, Mozilla a few
more, but what about all the others? What about text mode browsers or
acoustic browsers? What about those who want to create *innovative*
clients?

There are many many situations where even six full-time developers are
totally unthinkable.

> <nl> seems reasonably simple though,

There are some specific problems with <nl>, but I'll keep that for
another discussion.

> especially given a technology like XBL or HTCs, which any browser
> aiming to be an application platform really has to implement anyway.

Not every browser aims to be an "application plattform".

-antrik-