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

At 8:30 AM -0700 5/11/02, BOBC@ri-net.com wrote:
>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.

    Well Bob, if anyone missed the point here, it's you.  How many
times are you going to write and rewrite that client-side code?
Every time a new release of IE comes out that works differently?
Wow, talk about built-in obsolescence and job security.

>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.

    Talk about self-fulfilling prophesy.  Maybe those browsers don't
show up in your logs because your website doesn't work?  What you're
not getting is that you don't have to do *anything* to "support"
NetScape 6 or Opera, just write clean HTML.  Just for grins, here's
what showed up on my site last week (excluding bots and crawlers):

MSIE 65%
Netscape 32%
Opera 2%
iCab <1%
WebTV <1%

   Who knows, that WebTV guy just might have ordered something.
Didn't cost me anything extra to let him use the site.

>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!

    Why on earth would anyone want to do something like that?

>I'm no fan of microsoft, but the browser wars
>are over, MS won!  Its that simple.

    Netscape could have said the exact same thing a few years ago,
what did they have, around a 90% share?  Why would IE be invulnerable
to changing market conditions?  Do you not see that the user base is
becoming more diverse, with all of the new devices?  What are you
going to say the first time your CEO asks you why he can't use his
Palm to access his own website?

>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!

    Heaven help the corporate IT person who doesn't see the
handwriting on the wall.  The ones who have their heads out of the
sand are starting to heed what the security experts are telling them,
turn off Javascript, ActiveX, and in some cases even cookies.
Continuing to use IE with all of those features left on is fast
becoming to be seen as derelict.  And as Booth mentioned, the
Microsoft tax is coming.  Are you so sure that your CEO will like
your excuses for locking them into MS when he starts reading about it
in the WSJ?  You're betting your career on it, and possibly even your
entire company.

    Regards,

    - Lou Forlini
      Software Engineer
      System Support Products, Inc.