Re: Question from novice

I want to thank you for your very clear response.  Basically the reason 
I wrote this is because in NYC we work in a dual platform environment. 
The Board of Ed constantly created programs that we are expected to use 
but writes them for one browser.  In my case as a Mac user (not a crazy 
mac fanatic)  I am then forced to use a wintel machine.  Some answers I 
get are "that other browsers are not as secure" or it is "too expensive 
to change the code once it is built"  I find it hard to believe that my 
bank (which accepts multiple browsers and platforms) is not secure 
since they work.  Once again thank you, I will use your info for a 
future meeting with the "Powers that be"
Steven Jaffe
On Jan 28, 2005, at 11:20 AM, David Dorward wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 28, 2005 at 10:21:31AM -0500, Jaffe wrote:
>
>> I am  a trying to find out how you can find if a web page is supported
>> by more than one browser?  Is there a universal code that all browsers
>> accept.
>
> In theory all browsers should be able to handle HTML to a level
> represented by the standards published before the release of the
> software (given some time to implement that standard). HTML 4.x is
> about a decade old now, so all current browsers should be able to cope
> with it.
>
> In practise, however, browsers tend to fail to implement the complete
> spec, and/or have errors in their implementations. Internet Explorer
> is typically the worst offender in todays crop of graphical browsers.
>
> This doesn't mean that standards should be ignored, they are still a
> lot better then the chaos of vendor specific extensions.
>
>> The reason I am asking is I am a teacher in a school that uses
>> firefox to access certain Board of Ed sites.  I am denied access to
>> certain places because the site says must have IE
>
> Some websites make use of heafty JavaScript routines which only work
> on specific browsers, however there is rarely a good reason to do this
> - especially for Internet (as opposed to Intranet) websites.
>
> Other site authors, it seems, just can't be bothered to write cross
> platform code. Scottish Power, for example, used to (they seem to have
> fixed this now) block non-IE browsers to their entire site. If you
> spoofed your User-Agent string so your browser pretended to be IE you
> could still get in ... to read the "What to do in the event of a gas
> leak" information which (according to SP) wouldn't work except in IE.
>
>>  and it just says
>> initializing   http://www.managedservices.nycenet.edu/default.asp.
>
> As a .edu site, would that have been created using any Federal
> funding? If so, I suspect it will be in violation of Section 508.
>
> <http://www.section508.gov/>
>
>> I am on a Mac and IE is not supported anymore.  Can you give me any
>> further info on how I can bring this to their attention so the code
>> is improved.
>
> <http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/> and
> <http://webstandards.org/learn/faq/> might be of some use.
>
>
> -- 
> David Dorward                                      http://dorward.me.uk
>

Received on Friday, 28 January 2005 16:37:48 UTC