[G4] A joke

[Tony Johansen]

On 28/10/2005 2:15 PM, "Daniel Brieck Jr." <djbrieck at mac.com> wrote:

> It is a joke that there are still web-pages that require Internet
> Explorer, and will not run on anything else. Most of the pages will
> probably load fine on any browser. But building a modern page for
> only IE or any single web browser seems senseless for web
> professionals... There locking out the "world" in world wide web, it
> will be a great day when to them the world is not only people using
> IE on Windows. They should know that the internet should be viewable
> by anyone anywhere on any platform.
> 
> So don't let those web developers get to lazy... I would recommend
> providing some good feedback to the people who maintain the web-page
> that you are trying to use... If enough people complain about it they
> might fix it. Making your browser appear to them like IE is just
> avoiding the real issue and keeping them thinking that most people
> visiting the website are all using proprietary MS IE stuff,
> encouraging them to further keep supporting the crap.
> 
> 
> Some interesting thing on the topic http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/
> 
> Daniel J. Brieck Jr.

If only it were that simple. Many if not most cases are exactly as you
describe and have as much to do with IE blindness as anything else. But
unfortunately IE, Netscape and Firefox all have built in extensions that are
plain useful, Safari and Opera lack those same extensions.

Purists often suggest that it is IE in the wrong here, and that those
extensions should be removed to create a universal standard browser.

I would dare suggest that it is Safari and Opera that are the problem for
this reason:

Suppose you are a developer of some software. There are easily usable
extensions on browsers that cover more than 90% of the computer users out
there. Those extensions enable a wide range of useful tools and more
flexibility for those users. On the other hand you could ignore the
extensions in favour of the tiny minority and give everyone less tools and
less choices. This applies to a wide range of situations including making
blogs and websites. Examples being TypePad with blogging or Composer WYSIWYG
editor in Netscape.

I think it would be negligent of the developer not to use the extensions,
and, hey, his competitor will. As a software user I want them, so do the
majority of people when faced with the choice of more or less features in
certain software. 

It's about time that Apple made Safari more useful in this way by adopting
real world usage in the same sense that MicroSoft needs to update the many
failings in IE. There are times when there is a difference between browsers
and webmasters have to choose the majority for good practical reasons.
FireFox is able to deal with this effectively, so I fail to see why Safari
cannot. 

The perfect browser is yet to be built. It is annoying that I can't use
Safari for everything (use Netscape for working on the web) but Firefox is
showing good initiative in trying to include the best of all worlds, that¹s
probably why they have been so successful. When they get it organising
bookmarks as well as Safari, I may even make the switch myself.

Tony
http://www.tonyjohansen.com
A Life Of Art