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Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Acid2/archive3

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  • Oppose I spot lots of problems. Prose, organization, comprehensiveness and comprehensibility.
    • The lead does not seem to summarize the article; the history of it, for instance, is left out.
    • "Like Acid1, the way a web browser renders the test is compared to a reference rendering. If the two match, the browser is considered to pass the test." Seems like an overly cumbersome way of expressing a rather simple idea. "Like Acid1, a web browser passes the test if its rendered output matches a reference image."
    • Redundancies abound: "The idea is that if both web sites and web browsers follow agreed-upon industry standards, then any web site will work the same in any web browser." Will "work" or will "look" the same?
      • Will work the same - web standards are not just limited to appearance. Acid2 in particular tests hovering effects, object fallback, and error handling, which often tie into behavior and not just appearance. —Remember the dot (talk) 07:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • OK, and the redundancies? BuddingJournalist 16:33, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • The lay reader is not going to understand that good web design depends on both the web site and the web browser. They may well think that the web site is responsible for everything, and have no idea that the browser might actually be responsible for some problems. The word "both" emphasizes that web sites and web browsers both have to do their part to cooperate with each other. —Remember the dot (talk) 00:38, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • The lay reader may not realize that web standards were created by joint discussion either. They may think that web standards were created entirely by the web developers or entirely by the web browser makers. —Remember the dot (talk) 01:31, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • Finally, the phrase "The idea is that" tells the reader that this sentence sums up the whole point of web standards. Without that phrase, it's not so clear why the sentence is relevant to the article. —Remember the dot (talk) 01:31, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Microsoft later joined other browser makers" What does "joined" mean in this instance? Later is vague.
      • The "Non-compliant applications" section details Microsoft's progression towards Acid2 compliance. —Remember the dot (talk) 07:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • That section still doesn't explain what "joined" means here. "Joined" in doing what? Later is a vague term. Precision and clarity over vagueness. BuddingJournalist 16:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • All it's saying is that Microsoft is making its new version of Internet Explorer standards-compliant like other web browsers already are. The word "joined" does not refer to a specific event but rather Microsoft's progression from not properly supporting standards to properly supporting standards in certain cases to almost always properly supporting standards. This progression is detailed in the "Non-compliant applications" section, where the specific dates of specific progressions are given. —Remember the dot (talk) 21:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "After several complaints, the test was again updated in January 2006 to remove a test for unpopular SGML-style comments that were never widely implemented." Vague. Readers unfamiliar with this issue will not understand what the complaints were. Widely implemented = ? Link comments.
    • History section seems rather thin. What was the motivation behind Acid2? Was it chiefly to challenge Microsoft to get them to comply with standards? Were there broader goals in mind? A paragraph setting Acid2 in context would be helpful for many readers. What was the browser landscape like when Acid2 was under development/released (especially with respect to standards)? What was the effect of Acid1 on the industry? "and at that time, every web browser failed it spectacularly" OK, so when did browsers start passing the test? Did browser makers noticeably respond to their shortcomings in the Acid2 test? In short, what was the impact of Acid2?
    • "that made the mouth appear too close to the nose" On some browsers? On all browsers?
    • Caption: "The smiley face of the first version of Acid2. Note that due to problems in this version of the test, the mouth is too close to the nose and the text "ERROR" appears." This does not make sense to me. Is this an image rendered by some browser?
    • "The creators of Acid2 considered object element support important because it allows for content fallback; in other words, if the specified object fails to load then alternative (generally simpler, more reliable) content can be presented instead." I don't know what's being said here. What is this "specified" object and who's doing the specifying?
      • Please read HTML element#Images and objects, which is linked to in the article. A web developer can embed an object such as a Flash video or sound file into a web page with HTML's <object> tag. The <object> tag also allows the web developer to specify content to display if the specified object fails to load. —Remember the dot (talk) 07:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • OK. Then this prose needs to be cleaned-up. What is this "specified" doing here? The passive "be presented" is confusing to lay readers. "The creators of Acid2 considered object element support important because it allows for content fallback—if an object fails to load, then the browser displays alternative (generally simpler, more reliable) content in its place."
    • "Interestingly, although" Please stick to encyclopedic words.
    • "from the usual position of the element" What does "usual" mean?
    • "allows specifying", "allows applying", etc. -> awkward
    • "features new to CSS 2.0." First time readers are hearing about this. Was this 2.0 standard introduced after the Acid1 test? If so, the History section seems like a pretty good place to discuss this. What was the implication of CSS 2.0?
    • "web developers can add decorations and annotations to specified elements without having to add the content to each one individually." Again, don't know what's trying to be said here. Another puzzling "specified". Does "content" mean "decorations and annotations"? Code?
      • For example,
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <head>
        <title></title>
        <style type="text/css">
            p:before {
                content: "§ ";
            }
        </style>
    </head>
    <body>
        <p>Foo 1</p>
        <p>Foo 2</p>
        <p>Foo 3</p>
    </body>
</html>
    • "This helps ensure cross-browser compatibility by making all browsers treat CSS with the same level of strictness, so that what works in one browser should not cause errors in another." Isn't this the goal of the entire Acid2 test? How is this salient to this specific CSS parsing test?
      • Most of Acid2 tests for problems where the web developer did everything right and the web browser did something wrong. The error handling test makes sure that if it was the web developer that made the mistake, the web browser gracefully handles the error as directed by the CSS specification. —Remember the dot (talk) 07:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • That seems very different from what's being said in the sentence I quoted. I'm questioning whether it adds anything valuable. It seems like quite a generic statement. BuddingJournalist 16:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • Back up and read the sentences before it: "A number of illegal CSS statements are present in Acid2 to test error handling. Standards-compliant browsers are expected to handle these errors as the CSS specification directs." —Remember the dot (talk) 21:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
            • I think we're talking past each other. The two sentences before it are fine, and I understand them. I'm asking what value the sentence I quoted ("This helps ensure cross-browser compatibility by making all browsers treat CSS with the same level of strictness, so that what works in one browser should not cause errors in another"), which is quite generic, adds to this paragraph. One could take that same sentence and apply it to the other CSS tests, no? Is something more specific trying to be said here? BuddingJournalist 22:34, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
              • I'm really having a hard time seeing where the confusion comes from. Maybe an example would help us see eye-to-eye. In HTML, the <style> tag is required to have a "type" attribute, for example <style type="text/css">. Now let's say that I make a web page and I forget to include the type attribute. The error is clearly on my part. How harsh should the web browser be when it sees this mistake? Should it ignore the tag? Should it just assume that the type is text/css? Should not render the page at all? This is the kind of question that Acid2's error handling tests, though the specific cases it tests are a bit more complicated.
              • Now let's say that another browser sees a web page that says <style type="text/foo">. This is perfectly valid HTML, but even though the web developer explicitly said type="text/foo" this browser treats the tag as though it said type="text/css" and consequently garbles the entire display of the page. The web developer did everything right, but the web browser did not follow the HTML specification and because of that the page was garbled. Almost all of Acid2 tests for this kind of error, where the web developer followed the standard but the web browser is not. —Remember the dot (talk) 00:38, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "paint order, that is, overlapping elements", "user moves their" I shouldn't be seeing elementary grammar errors in an FAC.
    • "placed or painted" Are these two different? Why is the latter emphasized in italics?
    • "while it has traditionally been used for hyperlinks, it should work on a wide variety of HTML elements" "While" introduces a logical contradiction, but I'm not seeing one. Just because it's been traditionally used for something doesn't mean it shouldn't work on something else.
    • http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2005/April/browser.php <-- What is this measuring and is this a reliable source?
    • http://kilianvalkhof.com/2008/css-xhtml/understanding-css-positioning-part-1/ Reliable?
    • I stopped at the end of "Overview of standards tested". Doesn't bode well for the rest of the article. BuddingJournalist 02:09, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • I think you would have understood Acid2 better if you had read the rest of the article and followed the contextual links. There are some areas where the article could be clearer, however much of the vagueness you noted is clarified in linked articles and the sections past what you read. Before commenting again, would you be willing to read through the whole thing to get a better picture of what it's trying to say? —Remember the dot (talk) 07:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • I have read the entire article now, and I'm not seeing how the rest of the article makes the things I point out clearer (most of it is just lists). This notion that vagueness is OK is puzzling. Prose should be as clear as possible. The lists later on certainly present an aesthetically pleasing presentation of facts, but they do not synthesize/analyze these facts for the reader. That's why, when I asked about what the effect of Acid2 was on the industry, a list of compliant browsers does not adequately address the issue. BuddingJournalist 16:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • "Timeline of passing applications" features lots of technical jargon that could at the very least use some links. Not all readers will understand "Firefox 3 reflow-refactoring branch lands on main Gecko trunk. Firefox/Camino/SeaMonkey trunk builds now pass Acid2, barring other regressions." BuddingJournalist 02:11, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • "Unfortunately, another" Like "interestingly", another word to avoid. BuddingJournalist 16:33, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • A copy-edit of the Non-compliant applications section would be helpful. I'd actually suggest merging the prose of the non-compliant applications section into the History section, and then converting it to a list of non-compliant applications like the Compliant applications section. As it stands now, the two are oddly quite different, when (by their titles) they seem to serve the same purposes.
      • Where are the references for the list of Compliant applications? Not all of them seem to be covered in the timeline. BuddingJournalist 23:03, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • If a web browser uses a layout engine that passes Acid2, then that web browser will pass Acid2. The web browsers that do not have explicit references are new enough that they have used compliant layout engines from day 1. These layout engines were copied from the prominent open-source web browsers such as Firefox and Safari where all the work necessary to pass Acid2 was already done. Does that make sense? —Remember the dot (talk) 02:25, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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