Subj : Freebies
To   : ROY J. TELLASON
From : CHARLES ANGELICH
Date : Wed May 04 2005 11:59 pm

123c5f2e9476
tech



Hello Roy - 

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. ... 

--8<--cut 

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

RJT> I'm not sure about those percentages. I read somewhere
RJT> that since it was introduced firefox has snagged about
RJT> 20%, though I have no way of knowing how accurate those
RJT> figures are. 

Not very accurate at all apparently? 

http://informationweek.com/story/
showArticle.jhtml?articleID=159902316 

Looks like FF is about 6% as of last month. 

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

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

RJT> Indeed. 

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. 

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

RJT> There is, and I don't think I'd have too much trouble
RJT> finding it, but should that really be necessary? 

Yes because there are too many browsers out there that do not
fully support cascading style sheets and other W3C
recommendations that are now 3 years old. It's those who write
browsers that are messing with you as much, or more, than
webmasters. 

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
RJT>> for? 

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

RJT> Well, I don't use it in my browser, nor in any of the
RJT> pages I keep here, so I guess we're even. :-) 

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

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

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

RJT> Maybe. Or maybe they'll guess that they're seriously
RJT> alienating folks and at least consider looking into it. I
RJT> can't ask for much more than that. 

Many do look into browser compatibility when designing their
webpages but it is really discouraging that those who write the
browsers can add 'features' and eye-candy but can't accomodate
years old coding recommendations from the W3C. FF is as guilty
of this as the others are btw. 

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

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