The downside is the average Joe thinks this stuff is easy enough and he should do it professionally. And then:
- Market floods with professionals who antagonize proper web developers, since, to unknoweledgeable clients, the result appears to be the same
- Web floods with sites that behave in unpredictable ways in different browsers
- Proper developers carry the burden of dealing with idiosyncrasies of various browsers
- Browser developers carry the burden of trying guess through amazingly creative atrocities
Although, to be honest, things don't look as grim as they used to regarding the middle two.
I just wish some people would stick to HTML and stopped brute-forcing javascript to work.
Except all of those things started happening in about 1994. And that's why 15+ years later we have spec which defines error conditions rather than just the 'proper' way.
(If you weren't online/sentient back then, sites commonly had these 'Best viewed in Netscape' badges on them.)
- Market floods with professionals who antagonize proper web developers, since, to unknoweledgeable clients, the result appears to be the same
- Web floods with sites that behave in unpredictable ways in different browsers
- Proper developers carry the burden of dealing with idiosyncrasies of various browsers
- Browser developers carry the burden of trying guess through amazingly creative atrocities
Although, to be honest, things don't look as grim as they used to regarding the middle two. I just wish some people would stick to HTML and stopped brute-forcing javascript to work.