- From: Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 13:13:44 -0400 (EDT)
- To: John Gardner <John.Gardner@orst.edu>
- cc: Harvey Bingham <hbingham@ACM.org>, w3c-wai-ua@w3.org
I agree with John's idea, but suspect that the word "software" as proposed by Ian, would look better in a specification. Cheers Charles McCN On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, John Gardner wrote: I think you are trying too hard for preciseness that's unnecessary. Consider: "A user agent is *anything* that retrieves and renders Web content, including text, graphics, sounds, video, images, and other content types." "anything" is about as broad as you can get. John At 10:58 PM 6/8/00 -0400, Harvey Bingham wrote: >At 2000-06-07 16:01-0700, Dick Brown wrote: >Good idea. Is this broad enough to include special hardware and its >software interface? > >>The User Agent guidelines currently define user agent in this way: >> >>"A user agent is an application that retrieves and renders Web content, >>including text, graphics, sounds, video, images, and other content types." >> >>I propose we expand that definition to say (new text between asterisks): >> >>"A user agent is an application *or operating system component* that >>retrieves and renders Web content, including text, graphics, sounds, video, >>images, and other content types." >> >>Why the change? There are technologies that Microsoft does not consider >>applications, but rather part of the operating system, that wouldn't be >>covered by the User Agent guidelines under the current definition. >> >>Obviously, the OS vs. application issue has received some attention outside >>the scope of the WAI, and while I am not prepared to discuss that issue in >>detail, I hope we can agree on the broader definition. >> >>Dick Brown >>Program Manager, Web Accessibility >>Microsoft Corp. >>http://www.microsoft.com/enable/ >Regards/Harvey Bingham > John A. Gardner Professor and Director, Science Access Project Department of Physics Oregon State University Corvallis, OR 97331 tel: (541) 737 3278 FAX: (541) 737 1683 SAP URL: http://dots.physics.orst.edu/ -- 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 Postal: GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001, Australia
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