2.0 compatibility issues

[William Shipley]

Yes, 2.0 supports the image height and width hints.  It also starts  
downloading the images the second it downloads the HTML, and draws empty  
frames of the correct size almost immediately for images types that have  
a size in their header (like GIF, JPEG, TIFF... really almost all of  
them).

About NetScape compatibility: the sad truth is that the "standard" at  
any given time isn't what some arbitrary standards committee chooses,  
it's what people are using.  People use the NetScape extensions.  I've  
never seen a page with HTML3 math on it, but almost every page I go to  
these days has tables.

Languages evolve at the will of the people using them.

My job as a browser writer is to write a browser that displays the pages  
people have written.  I don't think it's my job to dictate policy to  
people.

And, for the record, I think frames are pretty cool, although I wish  
Netscape had given them a new content-type, rather than lumping them in  
with text/html even though they are entirely orthogonal.

Someone mentioned that NetScape is balkanizing the web with all their  
extensions, and I couldn't agree more; if we allow them to create  
extensions that only they support, they will kill off all other browsers  
and we will all suffer from the lack of competition (see Microsoft).  The  
solution to this isn't to ignore their extensions, though; this would be  
like ignoring Microsoft just because you hate Windows -- it'd feel nice  
but in the end you'd find the world has passed you by.  The solution is  
to support their extensions as well, and thus take away their advantage.   
(To continue my analogy, the solution is OpenStep/Windows.  You bet Omni  
will be supporting it.)

-Wil

PS: There hasn't been an alpha release yet, and I apologize for that.   
At this point it's not clear if there is going to be one before the beta,  
or if so how much before.