Validated HTML 3.0 (draft)

Walker

The next sensation in hypertext on the Mac.

'Walker' is the code name for an ambitious project: a World-Wide Web browser which conforms to applicable RFC's (including RFC 1866 and RFC 1738 for starters), implements large portions of HTML 3.0, favors the user's preferences over the author's design, and provides a user-friendly experience that is uniquely Macintosh.

Sadly, none of these have yet been accomplished on the Mac by any browser that I've seen. That is why I have taken this on.

Planned stages:

1. HTML->text converter.
   • Conformance to Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.
   • Support for 68000 processor, including Mac Plus.
   • Correct parsing of SGML comments.
   • Support for SGML marked sections.
   • Intelligent paragraph rendering.
   • Inline ALT text.
   • Collapsed whitespace.
2. Character-based local web browser with intelligent URL support.
   • URL resolution of "dir/" to "dir/index.html" or other file.
   • URL resolution of "/abs/path/" using BASE HREF to figure out where the root directory is.
     (For example, "/josh/" in file "Web:Metamage:proj:index.html" with BASE HREF="http://www.metamage.com/proj/" resolves to "Web:Metamage:josh:", not "josh:".)
   • Internet Config support for home page and protocol helpers.
   • Intelligent support for 1-bit displays.
3. RFC 1866-compliant World-Wide Web browser supporting HTTP.
   • Honest content negotiation.
   • Configurable HTTP_USER_AGENT. You can be the reptile if that's your thing.
   • Appropriate HTTP_REFERRER.
   • Internet Config support for typing downloaded files, with optional sanity-checking for pathological conditions (such as MacBinary-encoded files that are served as the unencoded type (e.g. application/x-stuffit)).
   • Option to collapse blank PRE blocks.
4. The best graphical hypertext viewer there is on the Macintosh.
   • Internet Config support for background color, etc.
   • Support for the "easy" features of HTML 3.0: BIG, SMALL, UL/LI SRC, HR SRC, UL PLAIN, Q, BQ, and others.
   • Option to ignore transparent inline images, and not even bother downloading images with giveaway names like "space.gif".

Other features

I probably will not support anything that hasn't appeared in a W3C draft, or in some way been subjected to public review. BLINK is right out.

The Walker project specifies a Web browser. This does not include any of the following:

• News reader/poster
• Mail reader/sender
• Java virtual machine

As you can see, at the same time I'm promising no small order, I'm not bagging Walker down with redundant features that are best supplied elsewhere.

Let me know if you're interested in contributing.