RE: info center search. III.

Joe,

    Feel free to rattle on all you want about your web designing
prowess and your unparalleled skills.  The fact remains that your
strategy is purposefully exclusionary, which runs counter to what the
Internet was founded on.

    I'm not saying that all of the geegaws that guys like you insist
need to be on a web page have work on every browser.  But only a
complete moron would not make the basic functions of their site work
with an HTML-compliant browser, including an all text browser.  And
yet I come across sites like those all of the time.  With Palm
browsers and even cell phone web access here or on the way, you might
want to re-think how much of that stuff you really need.  Many
sight-impaired folks need an all-text browser to have the content
read to them, also.  Oh right I forgot, Palm users, cell phone users,
and sight-impaired people aren't the "industry standard".

    I'm crying in my beer that you can't write a cross-browser
implementation to make a field all uppercase.  How many millions of
times are you going to download that useless routine to browser
clients, when you probably should be doing it on the server side
anyway?

    Thanks but no thanks to Microsoft HTML extensions, overblown
Javscript pull-downs, roll-overs, whiz-bang Flash animations, HTML in
e-mail, HTML on Usenet, and all of the other abominations that you
embrace as new "standards".  Just keep on snowing your clients that
they need all of that good junk so you can keep those checks rolling
in; you'll want the cash to buy more cases of that MicroSoft
cool-aid.  BTW, since supporting the "industry standard" is paramount
to you, don't forget to recommend replacing that AS/400 with a few
dozen Windows boxes.  Obviously using a server with a marginal market
share like the AS/400 is completely out.

    And no, I don't want something for nothing, I just want my
customers to be able to go to my site, read the content and order
stuff.  That's it.  Those of us with "real experience in web design"
know the dirty little secret is that it doesn't take a whole lot of
high-priced consultants to make it happen.

    Regards,

    - Lou Forlini
      Software Engineer
      System Support Products, Inc.


At 12:15 AM -0500 5/11/02, Joe Pluta wrote:
>As a web software developer, I know full well the idiosyncracies of the
>various browsers.  It's not a matter of skill that determines whether it
>makes sense to have full cross-browser compatibility.  That's because those
>of us with real experience in web design know that it goes far beyond a few
>simple differences in tags.  Most important is how events are handled, which
>differs wildly from one browser to another.
>
>While it's easy enough to create a static web page that has reasonable
>cross-browser compatibility, it is all but impossible to add any kind of
>reasonable functions to a browser without running into some severe
>differences from one to another.
>
>Try to enable the function keys on a web page.  Or make a field upper-case
>only.  Any non-trivial techniques require a long and arduous testing process
>that, due to the ever-changing landscape, the sorry state of the
>documentation and the lack of a decent debugging facility, is largely a
>trial and error process.
>
>There is no - and I repeat NO - simple way to handle events cleanly across
>all browsers.  The fundamental architecture between IE and Mozilla is so
>entirely non-compatible as to make it easier to try and sense the
>appropriate browser and then generate a completely different page for each
>one.
>
>Of course, then you have to deal with browser spoofing, where a browser
>pretends to be something it is not.
>
>Finally, if you're going to be completely adamant about your position that
>you should be able to use whatever software you like, then try to wander the
>web using Lynx for awhile and tell me how easy it is.
>
>No, an unbending requirement that I triple my development effort so that YOU
>can use whatever obsolete or unpopular piece of software you choose is
>completely and utterly unreasonable.
>
>On the other hand, whenever I tell someone I can modify my software to use a
>different browser if they're willing to pay the development costs, they
>suddenly seem to be less fanatical about the concept.  Because when it comes
>time to put their money where their idealism is, it's not so darned
>important anymore.
>
>So sure, rattle on about how I don't want your business.  If it's because
>you're unwilling to use an industry standard, whether it's de facto or not,
>and unwilling to compensate me for the time to support your quirks, then
>you're absolutely right.  Because in reality, you want something for
>nothing, and the fact of the matter is that there ain't no free lunch.