Re: Single Browser Intranets

At 09:50 PM 10/24/1999 , Bruce Bailey wrote:
>To quote Tim Berners-Lee:  "Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed
>with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old
>days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document
>written on another computer, another word processor, or another network."

The corollary, though, is that if you _can_ control the type of
computer, the word processor, or the network, it makes perfect
sends to support only one browser on a given page.  And you _do_
have that level of control in many corporate intranets, just like
many corporate intranets only have one supported email program
instead of trying to provide technical support for whatever anyone
chooses to install on their own system.

I'm not saying this is "right", people, or that it matches the
Cult of Interoperability's high standards for ethical conduct in
the Internet/Intranet workplace -- but I'm saying it's realistic and
common, and it makes perfect sense within a given context.  If we
have a company-wide policy, "We use Internet Explorer 4.0, which you
all have installed on your computers," then I am _not_ going to
care if my Intranet-only application won't run on your Lynx, your
Opera, or your Netscape.  (And again, this isn't the same issue as
accessibility, either.)


-- 
Kynn Bartlett                                    mailto:kynn@hwg.org
President, HTML Writers Guild                    http://www.hwg.org/
AWARE Center Director                          http://aware.hwg.org/

Received on Monday, 25 October 1999 01:24:14 UTC