Confusion

            Although such incompatible functions have been worked on, confusion still persist that can make browser support difficult.  Complexity still prevails.  Guisset (2005) noted:

It is a big challenge for a project like Mozilla to convince the owners of those sites that it is worth coding for the W3C DOM, which sometimes means a lot of work, and drops support for the older browsers.  It is also a big challenge to get the facts straight concerning the support for the W3C DOM.  Netscape 6 has been much criticized by clueless web designers who were writing their “JavaScript” for Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer using document.layers and documents.all.  Everyday we try to help people in the newsgroups in personal emails, is Bugzilla, to get their site as compliant as possible.  One of the biggest problem we encounter is the confusion between JavaScript, DHTML, and the DOM. (p. 1)

Standards and Specifications

            Piperoglou and Underwood (2004) detail the differences between the W3C specification and its implementation in Netscape Navigator 7.2 and Microsoft Explorer 6.0.  “The problem with HTML, is that from the first time it was defined as a language, the most popular implementations differed from the specification (and often their own documentation!)” (¶ Introduction).  These authors address the problem of standards and specifications.  “The first thing to understand is that technically there is no standard for HTML.  What this means is that there is no standardization body (i.e. the ISO), that publishes a definition of what the standards are in the language.  This is demonstrated by the fact that Microsoft continues to implement its own HTML elements in its Internet Explorer browser, in spite of the fact that many are not compatible with other browsers” (¶ Standards and Specifications).  However, Piperoglou and Underwood do recognize the W3C as the de facto standards body for HTML and Web browsers.  “These are the standards which Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and others consult when designing and upgrading their browsers” (¶ Standards and Specifications).