Don't link to microsoft, don't support their web branding (.htm)

[nomnex]

w3schools tutorials are really fine. They are a great starter to learn markup languages the right way. I really enjoy these tutorials (HTML atm).I have a critique/question to formulate though. I am a Linux user and I despise anything Mac/Windows related. The later is notorious to kill the standards* (any standard). W3C is about standard. So why are there so many references to Microsoft along the HTML tutorial pages (links to Microsoft.com in the "try it yourself", .htm vs. .html --DOS file limitation is long dead--.htm is only the Microsoft branding of their web editor for cretins, etc.)Is Microsoft a W3Csponsor? I would rather W3Schools links to and support the open community than a two faced mafia corporation.* The deprecated Front Page itself should be a sufficient reason to bomb Redmond and deport all the employees in a Siberian gulag (that's an image, of course).

[justsomeguy]

So why are there so many references to Microsoft along the HTML tutorial pages

Because for many years the dominance of Microsoft's browser meant that they did control the standards, to a degree. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the site is trying to teach what works in browsers.

Is Microsoft a W3Csponsor?

Microsoft is a member of the W3C, if that's what you mean.Your opinions are valid, but there's no reason to get insulting. There are a lot of people that do develop on Microsoft machines who still think that standards are important. Just because you personally despise anything branded Microsoft or Apple doesn't mean the web development community as a whole should ignore those things.

[real_illusions]

Aren't both Mac and Linux based around Unix? (I use Linux btw )

[thescientist]

Yes they are.I like JSG's points...the standards are how they are, it's just where we are at this point in time. Slowly things are coming together around the W3C's consensus for standards, and given enough time, more or less all browsers should start playing nice. I think its easy to forget how quickly the internet took off in the late 90's up until today, so much faster than people expected or could keep up with. Heck, people still make websites with tables! I think it's just as important for people to use the standards as it is for us to be informed of what they are. It's a two-way street. If you have used IE8, then you would know things are getting better. I would think its only in extreme cases that you couldn't get nearly the same results out of page you designed in both FF and IE, as long as you were following standards (Strict DTD, validating your pages, using semantic markup, utilizing good coding habits/standards, taking into consideration accessibility needs, etc)

[justsomeguy]

Aren't both Mac and Linux based around Unix?

Technologically, yes. Philosophically, Apple has very little in common with the open source movement behind Linux. Apple's platform is easily the most closed, locked-down platform in common use.

[jeffman]

Eliminating try-it links to Microsoft is just silly. If they linked to Disney, and some visitor hated Disney, should they eliminate those links, too. Where would it end?Mafia? Gulags? You forget alien abductions and the grassy knoll.In general, any site owner is likely to respond more favorably to suggestions that don't sound like the rantings of a troll.

[justsomeguy]

I'll also say, as a point of fact, that the W3schools site is in fact run on a Microsoft server and uses ASP. Microsoft has been changing the way they view the web over the past couple of years, and with IE9 we should be seeing much better support for existing standards than Microsoft has shown in the past.

[chibineku]

Something that still cracks me up is that the official PHP site is php.net. The open source, free, friendlier server language is written in the corporate one. I have tried Macs and Linux desktops and I can honestly say, in my opinion, Microsoft gives you better operating systems. But that's just my opinion.

[jeffman]

NO NO NO! No OS flame wars. Don't take us there. Please!

[thescientist]

well, seeing as he started it, let me tell you how much I love Snow Leopard

[boen_robot]

Something that still cracks me up is that the official PHP site is php.net. The open source, free, friendlier server language is written in the corporate one.

Is that sarcasm or something?I believe you know that ".net" is just a TLD. A site using ".net" TLD isn't necessarily coded with a ".NET" server language.Then again, I hope this is sort of a sarcasm into the way the OP is thinking about the ".htm" vs. ".html" extension - it makes no difference whatsoever, in the same way a TLD makes no difference - it's just a f%!(#& name.BTW, to nomnex, the bottom of the page you're probably citing says that the ".htm" extension was used just for old habbit's sake, and it doesn't make any difference whatsoever. Would you have prefered if they didn't mention anything about the ".htm" vs. ".html" question? What if a newbie encouters a web page on the net that has an ".htm" extension? My guess is they'd start coming here in this forum, asking if there's any difference... and it would be so frequently asked question that we'll be putting it into the (X)HTML FAQ, so... same deal. It needs to be said somewhere.Also, to Microsoft stopping support for FrontPage... have you heared of the Expression Studio suite? This is basically the new FrontPage. It's a... I don't want to say "great"... but it's a decent editor.

The deprecated Front Page itself should be a sufficient reason to bomb Redmond and deport all the employees in a Siberian gulag (that's an image, of course).

And I think * is sufficient reason to * all the *.No, seriously... whatever you put in place of each star, thinking in absolutes is never healthy. There are good people and bad people within Microsoft. It's a big corporation after all. The same can be said for Apple too. And in fact, the same can be said about some open source projects. The only difference is that if this happens in an open source project, people quickly move on to the next FOSS and forget anything happened. I can't point to a specific example (exactly because I too have forgotten such cases), but it's a fact that support is not guaranteed in any FOSS, except in cases like MySQL, where you pay for a guaranteed support.

[ShadowMage]

...he started it...

Sounds like my nieces and nephews!

[thescientist]

I believe you know that ".net" is just a TLD. A site using ".net" TLD isn't necessarily coded with a ".NET" server language.

haha, good point. I was wondering what he was getting at. I was thinking to myself, would he know there was a difference only if they called themselves php.org?

[chibineku]

Rather than being sarcasm, it was, in fact, The Dumbest Thing I Have Ever Typed. It will go down in history next to the mankini and Hiroshima as mankind's greatest errors. Shoot me, shoot me now.

[thescientist]

Something that still cracks me up is that the official PHP site is php.net. The open source, free, friendlier server language is written in the corporate one. I have tried Macs and Linux desktops and I can honestly say, in my opinion, Microsoft gives you better operating systems. But that's just my opinion.

Rather than being sarcasm, it was, in fact, The Dumbest Thing I Have Ever Typed. It will go down in history next to the mankini and Hiroshima as mankind's greatest errors. Shoot me, shoot me now.

quoted for posterity. :)

[chibineku]

<< this smiley is smarter than me

[thescientist]

:)fun, fun on the forums today!

[nomnex]

BTW, to nomnex, the bottom of the page you're probably citing says that the ".htm" extension was used just for old habbit's sake, and it doesn't make any difference whatsoever. Would you have prefered if they didn't mention anything about the ".htm" vs. ".html" question?

I would prefer the truth. i.e. Microsoft is renaming all the standard definitions for branding purpose (and not because of file limitation): htm vs. html (the standard) | defaut.htm vs. index.html (the Unix standard) | etc.<rant>Microsoft (and Appel) will always try to break the standards to impose theirs (see: ODF vs. OOXML among others). As they will attempt to destroy the open-source community (they call anti-American). They opt for a two faced policy when they lose a battle. So now -- after ~15 years -- the latest browser for corporate cretins (IE9) is finally standards compliant. And the new M$ WYSIWYG web editor uses CSS -- that M$ will probably re-brand CSS+M -- instead of bloated code and "M$ Word" tables. I am very impressed. I am equally impressed by M$ effort to impose the C# patent ridden "Mono" to the open-source community.</rant>But this is not about M$, it is about W3Schools. If M$ does not act as a direct financial sponsor, why does W3Schools makes free publicity for M$ on the tutorials? That's fine to have an ASP tutorial, but why the "Try it yourself" and web references on the HTML primer or on the HTML tutorial do not redirect to Debian, Open Office, PostgreSQL or whatever open-source addresses, instead of M$? -- and no, Disney is not open-source, and it has the same company model as M$, to answer a post above.Of course, this is me, but W3School tutorials feel like tutorials for a better global communication which link to www.naziworlddomination.com. I find this quite paradoxical. W3Schools is a very good way to discover the Internet, why not offering people with alternative to M$?

[chibineku]

I already made an ###### of myself here, so I have nothing to lose:It sort of grinds my gears somewhat that people go after big corporations when they're sitting at home or work on their computer wearing their mass produced clothes and drinking coke. Everybody who has ever posted online has bought into the world of big business. You don't rail against the fact that nearly every computer has Intel inside, or that the semi-conductors probably come from the same plant, or that you power it from the national grid. I like the open source community, I like open source software. It's usually developed with passion and honesty - if you DL a program and it's free and there's a glitch, you just report it and wait for the nightly build. If you pay $150 for the OS and it glitches, you call Bill Gates a moron (well, those who don't realise that he's not running MS anymore do). There's middle ground here, though. When Apple and MS were started, they were started in some guy's parent's garage on a shoestring budget. It was about brilliant people doing things with bits of metal and plastic that nobody had done before. So Bill Gates has more money than God - he does more for humanity than God (atheist here, as if you couldn't tell). Advances in technology are expensive and it's the big businesses who make economies of scale happen, allowing the open source community to get their hands on computers and functioning systems for a reasonable price so they can take it apart and rebuild it, as is their wont. If everyone had to start from scratch, manking would still be living in caves an dying of the common cold.And my final thought, which is more tailored to this thread: Yes, MS has its own conventions and ways of doing things, but so does everyone. My photoshop files don't run on every computer, and my Canon RAW images won't open in photoshop, or anywhere else, unless I pay for a plug-in. Proprietory formats are everywhere.

[nomnex]

I like open source software. It's usually developed with passion and honesty

I like that: "passion" and "honesty". W3Schools tutorials give me this feeling too > "honesty". Wouldn't be great if these tutorials promote "honest" and "passionate" projects (that's the single point of this thread, passed the provocative bit).

[justsomeguy]

I would prefer the truth. i.e. Microsoft is renaming all the standard definitions for branding purpose (and not because of file limitation): htm vs. html (the standard) | defaut.htm vs. index.html (the Unix standard) | etc.

Is that what you think the truth is, that Microsoft used default.htm instead of index.html for the purpose of branding? If you really believe that's the truth, then your existing bias against Microsoft might just be tainting your view a little bit, as evidenced by the fact that you think the Unix standard somehow deserves more weight than the Microsoft standard.Let's review. Microsoft IIS was first released for Windows NT 3.51, in 1995 (incidentally, the same year that Apache was released as NCSA HTTPd). This was 15 years ago, this was obviously the time that Windows 95 was coming out. Windows 95 was a DOS shell, and there was still a large base of DOS and Windows 3.x users, which meant that file naming limitations were very much of a reality for Microsoft at that time. If you were creating your web site on a workstation, which would be a common thing to do, then you were certainly naming your files with 3-letter extensions. It wouldn't make sense to rename files when you copy them to the server. So, Microsoft could rightly expect that users would be uploading files to IIS which ended in a 3-letter extension. Therefore, it's not really all that outlandish that they would something like default.htm as a default document. If you're protesting the difference between default and index, for that convention there is no defined specification which says that a web server must support either one. Microsoft refers to that file in IIS as a default document, and Apache refers to it as a directory index. Both of them make sense, and neither is obviously superior over the other. Frankly, the term default document more accurately describes what the purpose of the file is, as one would assume a directory index is just a listing of the contents in a directory (which is what happens when the default file is not present).So those are the facts, and you're trying to argue that Microsoft's purpose was branding and marketing? I believe your judgment is clouded, my friend. If they were going for branding, wouldn't the letters "ms" make an appearance somewhere?

If M$ does not act as a direct financial sponsor, why does W3Schools makes free publicity for M$ on the tutorials?

I confess that I really have no idea what you're specifically referring to. I clicked through the entire HTML basic section and didn't find a single link to microsoft.com. I've also got to say I have a hard time taking seriously people who use "M$".

[Synook]

There are two models of software development identified here - the proprietary model, and the open-source one. Many more traditional companies have adopted the former model, while many newer entities have determined that open source is a better path for them. However, I do not see how this distinction limits the ability for either group to create and promote standards.We must keep in mind that standards, especially web standards, change greatly over time, and that these standards are influenced by many sources. Every product, every implementation contributes something to the greater development of the web in general, and give new opportunities and ideas to help improve the experience of developers. Microsoft's innerHTML property was never part of JavaScript when they introduced it, but it was a great idea, and so it was adopted. Netscape's "layers" concept wasn't, and so was not adopted; however, the CSS specification now has the concepts of z-indexes and absolute positioning.Web standards come from everywhere; they are not the property of open-source groups, and some of our greatest innovations (visual HTML?) have come from entities dealing in proprietary software. To hate is wrong, and to try to view a certain group of our software ecosystem as "bad" and not worthy of inclusion is detrimental to the system as a whole. Existing standards are great, but without innovation become stagnated - and all companies, open-source software or not, have something to contribute. Web standards, like all, are debated, and it is good that alternatives are produced - just look at the development of the Ethernet standard. These experiences enrich the final result, and without them we run the risk of adopting procedures that are not optimal, or desirable.And when new standards are recommended, I think it is great that all software products, even proprietary ones, adopt these standards - and I'm sure you would agree that it would be worse if MS didn't implement the HTML spec in their browsers. Just like any company (even an open-source one), they have to make money, and I'm not sure why you begrudge them for moving with the times.W3Schools is not in the business of of promotion for any entity, open-source or otherwise, and the links to Microsoft are used for convenience. Everyone knows about Microsoft, it is a very neutral option, something that does not strive to promote certain ideas into the minds of the average reasonable person.Really, we cannot be afraid of proprietary products - they are software that do something, just like any other, and freedom and other ideals aside it is simply the way a company has decided to make money. To split the world down the proprietary / open-source divide will simply serve to alienate many good ideas, foster a close-minded approach, and ultimately hurt the standards system itself.P.S. Mono is open source, and developed by Novell.

[nomnex]

Is that what you think the truth is, that Microsoft used default.htm instead of index.html for the purpose of branding?

Today, absolutely. Your point would be valid if were were still in the 90's though.

If you really believe that's the truth, then your existing bias against Microsoft might just be tainting your view a little bit, as evidenced by the fact that you think the Unix standard somehow deserves more weight than the Microsoft standard.

I don't believe anything, I just say Unix is more respectful of standards and nomenclature and does not pretend to re-invent the well every times..html = hyper text markup language

I confess that I really have no idea what you're specifically referring to. I clicked through the entire HTML basic section and didn't find a single link to microsoft.com.

http://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?fi...e=tryhtml_links

I've also got to say I have a hard time taking seriously people who use "M$".

so don't, having a good time is better option.Since I am am scoring popularity points among M$ supporters here, I answer Synook on a particular chapter.

W3Schools is not in the business of of promotion for any entity, open-source or otherwise, and the links to Microsoft are used for convenience

That is an oxymoron.

Everyone knows about Microsoft, it is a very neutral option, something that does not strive to promote certain ideas into the minds of the average reasonable person.

Excuse me?!? "Microsoft a very neutral option [...] into the minds of the average reasonable person": reasonable person as in the George Orwell novel "1984"? That must be some sort of second degree humor I don't catch. You can't be serious with such statement?

Mono is open source, and developed by Novell.

We all know that Novell is the M$ copycat on Linux. and Mono the latest M$ attempt to control the open-source (who needs a .NET framework anyway? - I don't). Maybe you can take a look at this:

. That's totally out of topic, but since we are at it, and it is much funnier to watch than a M$ presentation. Anyway, digression aside, I am still taken aback a nice, free and public web tutorial site (BTW is w3schools related and dependent of the W3C.org? Maybe here could lay some of my confusion) is promoting a company openly against freedom and choice. But "I will survive" (Gloria Gaynor's song, 1978).I will redeem myself later on with technical questions. Cheers all.

[boen_robot]

Today, absolutely. Your point would be valid if were were still in the 90's though.

Ever heared the term "backdraw compatibility"? It's something proprietary software usually does to keep users happy. Too often, FOSS has far less of backdraw compatibility concerns, which is one of the main reasons there are still people and companies that go after proprietary software even when there is a free and in some cases better open source solution.

I don't believe anything, I just say Unix is more respectful of standards and nomenclature and does not pretend to re-invent the well every times.

... and you say that because that's what you believe. So, in your own kind of words... "I don't believe anything, I just say..." - that's an oxymoron.

http://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?fi...e=tryhtml_links

OK... is there any link that 99% of today's users on the web are aware, which is not W3Schools, and which is not part of some kind of corporation. Let's see... the mass user knows about Microsoft, (maybe) Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter... while the last three offer free services, Google is from a for-profit company. And the last two... no please... anything but a social network. If not anything, social networks are usually "transitional" - they last a few years, and then they keep existing, but they're not popular. We wouldn't want someone coming in after a few years to ask for the links to be changed to *insertNewSocialNetworkHere*.

We all know that Novell is the M$ copycat on Linux. and Mono the latest M$ attempt to control the open-source (who needs a .NET framework anyway? - I don't).

People using .NET applications need the .NET framework. Those people are currently on Windows and often in big companies - the same kind of people the open source community is trying to lure in. With that said, would you rather have just "Windows people" and "Linux people" instead of trying to turn the "Windows people" into "Linux people" by luring them in with the "backdraw compatibility" gift?As for Novell being a copycat of Microsoft on Linux... partnership with Microsoft and being owned by Microsoft are two different things. In any day, Novell engineers can stop talking with Microsoft about the implementation details of .NET, and just create their own runtime that happens to sucessfully run .NET code... most of the time. In any day, Microsoft can stop sharing information about .NET if it feels it's some kind of a nifty feature they want to preserve only for Windows. This however won't be in either party's interest - Microsoft wants to share the goods of .NET with the FOSS community in hopes of making them run back to Windows, and Novell, like any FOSS developer wants to attract Windows users to UNIX systems by providing a runtime that can run their existing applications.

Anyway, digression aside, I am still taken aback a nice, free and public web tutorial site (BTW is w3schools related and dependent of the W3C.org? Maybe here could lay some of my confusion) is promoting a company openly against freedom and choice. But "I will survive" (Gloria Gaynor's song, 1978).

No. W3Schools is not related to W3C.org. That's indeed where one of your few confusions lies. If they were related, having that as an example of an "external" link probably wouldn't be external enough to demonstrate the point. They aren't, but linking to W3C may be confusing to the average HTML tutorial reading user. It would only quadriple the number of people that think W3S is related to W3C.

[nomnex]

No. W3Schools is not related to W3C.org.

Alright, so much for my "surprise" to M$ references and .asp pages then.

That's indeed where one of your few confusions lies.

few ;-)Edit: I had skipped this one:

I don't believe anything, I just say Unix is more respectful of standards and nomenclature and does not pretend to re-invent the well every times.

... and you say that because that's what you believe. So, in your own kind of words... "I don't believe anything, I just say..." - that's an oxymoron.

Nope, I said that because Linux as far less marketing concern and tend to keep things simple, while M$ makes everything obscure and complicated under a "100 options" GUI. But whatever...Now, about the link reference, I would find a better idea to simply link to http://www.w3.org/ (that's more informative). And since I don't know about w3school, I welcome or some public information about the project (maybe in another thread).