Re: info center search. III.

The fact that MS with IE won the browser war does not help those who do
not, for whatever reason, use Windows.

I gave up on Windows for reasons I explained before, and I do not see
why I should be forced to use a OS that costs too much in running costs.
Corporate sites are full of MS 'slaves' chasing about, pandering to
every PC every time it hiccups. In my case this was too expensive. It
cost me far to much time. World wide there must be billions of dollars
of wasted effort going in to supporting an unstable, but popular OS.

Windows is only one OS. There are others. The only way MS can be made to
produce a real, stable, reliable OS is if it gets some serious competition.

I don't have the luxury of IE, because, I do not want to have a
dedicated Windows system only used for the purpose of Web Browsing. I
need to use alternative browsers, and I need web developers to support
those browsers.

Syd Nicholson


>
>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
>