- Browser Olympics
- Event 1: Recognize the Type of Any Web Document
- Event 2: Recognize the Content of Any Web Document
- Event 3: Understand the Content of the Web Document
- Event 4: Display the Web Document
- Event 5: Keep Users Safe from Villains on the Web
- Totaling the Scores
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Event 2: Recognize the Content of Any Web Document
Contestant, please examine a web document of unknown origin, and tell the user exactly what kind of content is in it. A more difficult event. It turns out that there are lots of subtle variations in web content, and a web surfer wants a browser smart enough to detect all of those variations. You don't want to surf half the web.
Event 2 Results
|
Competitor |
Score |
|
Mozilla |
0.99 |
|
Opera |
0.99 |
|
KHTML |
0.99 |
|
Internet Explorer |
0 |
Why no perfect scores? The problem is that the many kinds of HTML and XHTML web pages can be divided into two groups: ones that are made well, and ones that are made badly.
It's not in the rules, but all browsers try to provide some support for badly made web pages. That's an important feature, because it means that school kids, the disabled, the uneducated, and harried managers can all be heard across the web. There should be extra points here, but the Olympics are a tough competition. Instead, we have points for correct document sniffing of properly made web pages. Most engines sniff documents pretty well, but it's a black art; it's doubtful that any browser will ever be perfect. IE is not as functional as the other browsers. It's a bit older in some ways. IE's unlucky score of zero is due to some very strange rules for handling XML content. The whole world is gradually turning to XML, and for IE to drop the ball on that item is really a big problem for everyone. We'd love to give IE a 0.9, but the way it works it just won't perform to that level.