Re: Need advice on reliable way to identifyIE asthe browser

Anyone involved in web development must develop for standards FIRST and
speak with a common voice that all browsers support the same standards.
It is easier to develop for standards than to develop for the
eccentricities of the most common browser. Anyone who's tried to do
anything nontrivial layout-wise in IE6 can speak to the difficulty of
working around the different bugs and quirks.

With IE7, things got better (but still behind the standards), yet IE7
wouldn't even exist if it weren't for competition from FireFox. The
Mozilla engineers have expressed that their intent isn't necessarily to
dominate the web, but to force other browser makers (most notably
Microsoft) produce better browsers. In that, they have accomplished
much.

--Robert

Disclaimer: I'm speaking only for myself here.

-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Maurice O'Prey
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2008 1:25 PM
To: 'Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: Re: [WEB400] Need advice on reliable way to identifyIE asthe
browser

In think 'grass roots missionary work' is a good term Nathan, but I had
assumed that you work in the area of web development? Anyone involved in
this area must develop for the most popular browser (instead of
criticising
it!)

Maurice


-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On
Behalf Of Nathan Andelin
Sent: 01 August 2008 16:08
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: [WEB400] Need advice on reliable way to identifyIE asthe
browser

From: Maurice O'Prey
Some of we poor souls (about 80% of us) choose to use IE.

I'm not sure that "choice" is the appropriate noun. I still recall
ISP's
offering Netscape and IE options when people signed up for their
service,
and I think Netscape had something like 80% of the market share, back
then.
Then Microsoft embedded IE in Windows... And it's not like you can even
uninstall it, or separate it out from Windows updates. And since
Microsoft
essentially rebuffed the government's attempt to intervene on behalf of
consumer choice, I think a little bit of grass-roots missionary work is
in
order.

Nathan.