Subj : Freebies
To   : ROY J. TELLASON
From : CHARLES ANGELICH
Date : Wed May 04 2005 05:20 am

123c5f2badda
tech



Hello Roy - 

--8<--cut 

WC>> BTW neigther LINKS nor LYNX would open the site :-( 

WC>> Charles got in with a later release of Firefox amd a
WC>> reload. 

RJT> Some sites are just *so* bad. I was talking to somebody
RJT> last night about one, that has the gall to use the word
RJT> "global" in their name -- and which has been a PITA for
RJT> several years now. I heard about it, went to check it out,
RJT> and could only get so far with it, which was a shame,
RJT> because they seemed to offer some certifications and a bit
RJT> of training material. So I wrote them about it, and got
RJT> told that "they only worked with IE and Netscape and I
RJT> should install one of those". To which I responded "This
RJT> is bullshit" and every email from that point onwards
RJT> carried that subject line. :-) 

I'm not saying the website is right or that you are wrong for
being annoyed with them but from their perspective they had IEx
capability (90% of the browsers in use) and Netscape (at that
time possibly another 5%)? Only a very small percentage of
users (other browsers) were having problems - or so it might seem.

RJT> Fast forward a couple of years. Now they have a "browser
RJT> capability test" that you have to get past to use the site. 

"Browser sniffer" - few of these are complete and many are
quite poorly written. 

RJT> Their list of "ok" browsers also includes Mozilla, but my
RJT> copy of firefox, which is based on Mozilla, wouldn't get
RJT> past it. 

I'm not familiar enough with FF to know where to change the
browser ident but there _should_ be a way to have FF ident as
'mozilla'? 

RJT> It barfed on the browser name, it barfed on the version
RJT> number (!), and it barfed on such things as me not having
RJT> flash enabled/installed. Excuse me? WTF to I need that for? 

FLASH is a pain but to be objective the lack of uniformity of
the 'majors' for embedding a player doesn't help web builders
write the proper codes for rm, wmv, or mpg videos.  FLASH OTOH
is reputed to have remained more consistent from version to
version and is quite compact for both sound and video. I'm only
trusting other people's opinions on this since I don't use
any FLASH on my webpages. :-)

RJT> So I'll find my info elsewhere... 

RJT> You could talk to those guys, and see if they can possibly
RJT> understand the problem with the site, and if they won't
RJT> change it, then that speaks volumes toward their attitude
RJT> in general, and they are probably best avoided anyhow. 

Again, it's sloppy web design/code and shouldn't be done that
way but with 95% of the people's browsers accepting the code
getting them to spend more time/money on the website might be
like the flea thinking it owns the dog. ;-) 

>
>        ,                          ,
>      o/      Charles.Angelich      \o       ,
>     <|                              |>  __o/
>     / >          USA, MI           < \   __\__
 

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