Re: Minimal Browser Capabilities

Folks, please note that this is an open issue in the WCAG group - it is in
the iossues document as issue 77 but has no anchor to point to - search
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wcag20-issues for "77. Documenting assumptions" or
go backwards from http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wcag20-issues.html#2 - so it would
be helpful for people who are going to follow this here to send their final
conclusions to the WCAG grup as input on that issue.

cheers

Charles McCN

On Mon, 24 Dec 2001, Kynn Bartlett wrote:

  At 8:49 PM -0500 12/24/01, Access Systems wrote:
  >On Tue, 25 Dec 2001, Vadim Plessky wrote:
  >  > Of course, you need to have JavaScript enabled to get this code working :-)
  >  > // but you can't do any on-page browser detection without
  >JavaScript, anyway.
  >But Javascript is not normally on in Lynx.  (in fact I don't know how to
  >enable it in Lynx or if it is even possible)

  Lynx doesn't do JavaScript.  This should be considered a serious shortcoming
  in Lynx, but instead it seems to be viewed as a virtue.  I'd really like
  to see text browser that did JavaScript and CSS.

  Anyway, the answer there would be a <noscript> fallback intended for
  browsers which don't do JavaScript or which don't have JavaScript
  enabled.

  >I say it again, there should be no assumption what so ever that there is
  >any user side support for anything.

  Surely you don't mean "for _anything_".  Do you assume client-side
  support for HTML 2.0?  What about HTML 3.2?  What about HTML 4.01
  Transitional?  What about HTML 4.01 Strict?  What about CSS level
  1?  What about CSS level 2?  What about ECMAScript?  What about
  DOM?

  See, we need to assume some level of basic support.  Okay, so some
  browsers won't measure up to it -- but some browsers (such as Lynx)
  have not been reprogrammed in 5 years.  More recent browsers do
  indeed have some degree of all of the above, so the answer simply
  is to ask what is the reasonable level of support to expect, and
  is it fair game to expect someone to be using a reasonable browser
  when accessing your site?

  --Kynn



-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI    fax: +1 617 258 5999
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(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)

Received on Tuesday, 25 December 2001 08:00:19 UTC