Re: Netscape

When it is achievable and you have the power to deliver it, deliver it.
In other words, if you are a developer worth her salt and your boss
tells you to develop something and you explain that to do ths these
things need to be taken into consideration and you are granted leigh
way, what is the harm i doing it.  I'm not saying break code just so it
will run on the majority of user's systems, I'm saying deliver content
because you can that will work.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kynn Bartlett" <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
To: "Access Systems" <accessys@smart.net>
Cc: "David Poehlman" <poehlman1@home.com>; "RUST Randal"
<RRust@COVANSYS.com>; "WAI (E-mail)" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 8:38 PM
Subject: Re: Netscape


At 8:19 PM -0500 1/14/02, Access Systems wrote:
>  >   But, you see, the problem here is not the
>>  coding of my site.  The problem continues to be Netscape 4's poor
>  > coding, and then that's compounded by the coding of Opera and/or
>but they "are" and a good web developer works with what exists not what
>"Should exist"

But it's not an accessibility problem if someone chooses to use
defective software.

>  > It's unreasonable to expect every web developer on the planet to
make
>  > special compensation for the facts that
>nope only the ones who should get the big bucks

Even that's not necessarily true.  While I do think it's reasonable to
use server-side adaptation to make up for the fact that Netscape 4 is
broken, if you have server-side transformation techniques available,
I also think that purposely disabling your code so that it runs on
Netscape 4 is a bad choice if you are only serving up one version of
your site.

>  > (a) Netscape 4 sucks,
>an opinion not a fact

No, it's a fact. It's provably crappy when it comes to standards
support. I'm not just making this up -- it's easily demonstrated to
be downright awful and harmful to the web.

>  > (b) Opera and/or your AT sucks [or at least don't speak a common
API],
>but it is the fact of life, and he is not unique

Right, but is it the responsibility of the browser and AT programmers
to make their software work together, or is it the responsibility
of the web developer?  Again, this is a problem with the software.
The web developer has done everything right, and has no way of
knowing if random software A will communicate with random software
B, and he shouldn't ever have to know this.

>  > (c) your boss sucks.  That's not our problem, as web developers.
>not the web delelopers problem
>I think that is the major difference,  web developers  (well some) seem
to
>think that all users of the web need to follow certain strict standards
>set by the developer
>users, just want what they got to work!

But sometimes what they've got simply won't work.  I want my bicycle
to go 65 miles an hour on the freeway.  But it's not going to happen.
If I want to go that fast, I have to buy a motorcycle.  Fortunately,
the motorcycles for web access are generally free, short of requiring
download time in order to install.

The fault here is with the user for using faulty software.  It is
unreasonable to use faulty, broken software and then expect things
to work reliably. And it is dangerous to overall web access to
expect web developers to encourage faulty software by continuing
to program specifically for those bugs.

--Kynn

--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                 http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain            http://idyllmtn.com
Web Accessibility Expert-for-hire          http://kynn.com/resume
January Web Accessibility eCourse           http://kynn.com/+d201
Forthcoming: Teach Yourself CSS in 24 Hours

Received on Tuesday, 15 January 2002 10:48:17 UTC