- From: Jamie Mackay <Jamie.Mackay@cultureandheritage.govt.nz>
- Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 09:54:47 +1300
- To: "'Charles McCathieNevile'" <charles@w3.org>, Marti <marti@agassa.com>
- Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Here are some stats for December from a New Zealand history site I manage : IE - 69.47% NN - 14.64 Out of the NN users: 83.57% use vers 4x 7.76% use vers 3x To put this in perspective, out of the 7,603 total visitor sessions for December, 90 were by people using NN3x browsers. Out of the IE users: 83.57% use 5x 15.72% use 4x 0.54% use 3x (43 visitor sessions) 0.14% use 2x (28 visitor sessions) Not sure that this tells people anything other than the numbers still using vers 3x browsers are very small, I would have thought it was extremely unlikely that any organisation would still be insisting its employees use NN3x as an internet browser (perhaps for intranet though). Personally I always design pages so that the content is obtainable without style sheets, not by defining fonts but simply letting the user's default font do the work - it might not look quite as pretty but it is all there. (If they want pretty they are going to be limited in their options with NN3 anyway). Jamie Mackay > -----Original Message----- > From: Charles McCathieNevile [SMTP:charles@w3.org] > Sent: Tuesday, 19 December 2000 00:02 > To: Marti > Cc: Charles F. Munat; 'Anne Pemberton'; 'Kynn Bartlett'; > w3c-wai-ig@w3.org > Subject: Re: Politics: Strict Guidelines Considered Harmful > > This seems like a more considered and easier to digest message on the > topic. > > The discussion as I understand it is about a couple of different things. > There is a technical issue - what is the place of the font element? As I > see > it, the use of the font element to enhance backwards compatibility does > not > conflict with the use of CSS. The use of font to alone, to provide > formatting > effects, is like the use of a style attribute containing CSS, or style > sheets > that rely on id attributes to assign styles - it makes it very difficult > for > the reader to provide therir own styles in a meaningful manner. If it is > done > instead of identifying the semantics available in HTML, this is a double > loss. > > Should we be supporting netscape 3? Intersting question, and one that was > raised by Graham Oliver. If a few people have some log data we could find > out > whether it is really used much. If we can also find out whether that is > because people cannot upgrade for some reason, then we will be approaching > an > answer. The further question is whether that is related to accessibility, > or > is because their systems administratoror purchasing officer prohibits it > (in > the latter case, I hope they realise that Netscape 3 was not a free > product, > and paid for it...). > > Glossing over the fact that there arre a couple of other very small > browsers that work the same, let us imagine these scenarios: > > Nobody uses it ever. > (I know this is not true - a friend of mine does, but not from any > requirement since he has a numberof other browsers he also uses from time > to > time - much as I use Lynx). In this case, we could just ignore it. And the > font element too. > > There are people with reading disabilities, who, because of their > disability are unable to upgrade, and for whom it is effectively > impossible > to read unformatted text. > Then we need to keep supporting it, and providing presentation by the > use > of font elements in conjunction with CSS is still necessary > > There are people with disabilities who cannot upgrade and find it > difficult > to understand default-formatted content > Same goes, but at P2 instead of P1 level (this is an abstract discussion > - > particular checkpoints of WCAG aside for the moment) > > There are people without disabilities, who use it and don't want to > upgrade > There is no accessibility requirement to use or not use font. There > still > is a requirement to use a technology that allows for meaningful control of > presentation (CSS element/semantic class based styling, for example). It > is > up to designers whether they want to provide the same experience for this > population or not. > > Which brings me back to another part of the argument. Should designers > expect total control over the presentation of their page? My 2 bits worth > says "No, that is simply not possible, like expecting someone to make a > night > last for 48 hours. It is reasonable for a designer, within the constraints > of > the medium, to provide a presentation that enhances the comprehension and > clarity of their content." (I think that people were vehemently arguing > this > point against each other, but from the same side in fact). > > my 2 cents on teh topic that this has become... > > Charles McCN > > On Mon, 18 Dec 2000, Marti wrote: > > First, Thanks to Charles for clarifying my comments on graphics, and my > apologies for a poorly chosen example that would in anyway imply I was > in > favor of text-only sites. > > I think there are actually three sides to this argument. IMHO, both the > primary sides have a number of good valid points. > Example: > 1. <font>, and its like, if allowed are likely to be misused. > (decreasing > accessibility) > 2. If disallowed, <font>, and its like, will be used anyway as that > level of > the guidelines will be ignored. (decreasing accessibility) > > Under the occasionally hot rhetoric some good points have been made on > both > sides and it is my hope that some common ground can be found that will > help > us move to a web where <font>, and its like, are curiosities of the > past. > Marti > > > > > -- > Charles McCathieNevile mailto:charles@w3.org phone: +61 (0) 409 134 > 136 > W3C Web Accessibility Initiative > http://www.w3.org/WAI > Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia > September - November 2000: > W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, > France
Received on Monday, 18 December 2000 15:56:41 UTC