RE: info center search. III. -- MIDRANGE-L


These arguments are interesting.  What are your plans for the day the M$
itself chooses to break their "standard"?

If I've understood the .net initiative correctly the idea is to create a
bit-meter to your own data.  You will need to keep the data on M$ servers
strategically located at hardened and secure sites around the world.  The
bit-meter"  will keep track of the data transfers and your corporate wallet
will be automatically credited so you won't even need to write a check to M$


Your customer name and address list? No problem. Want it in Word or Excel?
Word is .4 cents, Excel is .7 cents per row.  Need four copies?  Not a
problem.  Copies 2 through 9 are discounted by 15%.

---------------------------------------------------------
Booth Martin http://www.MartinVT.com
Booth@MartinVT.com
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-------Original Message-------

From: midrange-l@midrange.com
Date: Saturday, May 11, 2002 11:31:07
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: RE: info center search. III.

This is a multipart message in MIME format.
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Lou,

Your missing the point entirely here. While this discussion is focused on
technology, the issue of supporting browsers has nothing whatsoever to do
with technology, but rather economics and the customer base. I have one
site that makes extensive use of dynamically generated DHTML and
Javascript. Click a radio button and a new series of questions appear.
The questions a deverived based on data from database files and the whole
thing is dynamic. I have one set of code that handles MS/IE 4.x and up
including 6.x. Since there enough of my customers using Netscape 4.7, we
have had write this complex code not once but twice with completely
separate code after we detect the browser for Netscape 4.7.

Less than 1/2 of 1% of my customers use Netscape 6. In fact over the last
3 months our statistics show that we have had NO (ZERO) visitors using NS
6. My Netscape 4.7 code will not work with NS 6. because the morons at
the new Open Source Mozilla project chose not to provide backwards support
for older Netscape browsers. Its bad enough that I must support NS 4.7
which has cost me hours of development time. I see "Software Engineer" in
your signature. I presume someone pays you for your work? My developers
get paid also. Why would I invest time and money in a browser that an
insignificant number of people use. I should support Opera also right? I
have yet to see Opera show up in my stats. The techies that use Opera
don't seem to visit commercial sites or have more than one browser
installed and know the limitations.

In fact Lou, your perspective is really the problem. If we as web
developers band together and say firmly: WE DO NOT SUPPORT NS6 -- It will
(as it is doing) go away! I'm no fan of microsoft, but the browser wars
are over, MS won! Its that simple. There are still a million or so
Netscape 4.7 users out there so we need to support THEM in public
websites.

My Intranet and internal sites are MS only! In fact heaven help the
corporate user that I find using NS browsers!

Bob Cancilla
Republic Indemnity Company of America
(818)382-1023
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