Microsoft's Internet Explorer (and other web browsers) have to withstand abuse from left right and centre. It's not website developers that try and crash the system, it's those who want to bring the companies down. In the case of the Hummy, ITV/BBC/other corps, etc are not trying to write code that causes a problem.
IE is a good example of a renederer that is very very fault tolerant, you can do really stupid things with HTML and ie will still display it. I have seen pages with HTML close tags in the middle of the page, missing table tags, other badly formed html which IE renderers just fine. IE expects to be handed rubish and will try hard to provide a visable result. It certainly wont crash if there is a fault (not intentional) in the HTML it is given. It is one of the more tolerant renederers.
The problem with test suites, like the dtt one, is they generaly are designed to prove that a system functions according to the spec, and do not generaly test behavior with content that deviates from the spec, that is not thier purpose.
They may contain some tests for common quirks, and backward compatability issues, but they wont tell you if your renderer handles all of the possible input cases. Especialy if there are issues of input corruption.
.... It would be better to approach lockups by making the engine protected against exceptions, for which there are stratergies, and then dealing with format compatability issues on a case by case basis.
I do agree. Quality software takes people with experience, skill and the appropriate resources. The problem is often that "anyone" can write software, but good stuff takes effort. There are lots of quite good bits in the Humax like the user interface which is clean and well thought out (comapred to some devices I've seen)
We need all of it pulling together.... hopefully not too far away.
Comments
IE is a good example of a renederer that is very very fault tolerant, you can do really stupid things with HTML and ie will still display it. I have seen pages with HTML close tags in the middle of the page, missing table tags, other badly formed html which IE renderers just fine. IE expects to be handed rubish and will try hard to provide a visable result. It certainly wont crash if there is a fault (not intentional) in the HTML it is given. It is one of the more tolerant renederers.
The problem with test suites, like the dtt one, is they generaly are designed to prove that a system functions according to the spec, and do not generaly test behavior with content that deviates from the spec, that is not thier purpose.
They may contain some tests for common quirks, and backward compatability issues, but they wont tell you if your renderer handles all of the possible input cases. Especialy if there are issues of input corruption.
I do agree. Quality software takes people with experience, skill and the appropriate resources. The problem is often that "anyone" can write software, but good stuff takes effort. There are lots of quite good bits in the Humax like the user interface which is clean and well thought out (comapred to some devices I've seen)
We need all of it pulling together.... hopefully not too far away.