CHARLES ANGELICH wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON:

CA>> I'm not saying the website is right or that you are wrong for 
CA>> being annoyed with them but from their perspective they had IEx 
CA>> capability (90% of the browsers in use) and Netscape (at that time 
CA>> possibly another 5%)? Only a very small percentage of users (other 
CA>> browsers) were having problems - or so it might seem. 

RJT> I'm not sure about those percentages. I read somewhere that since 
RJT> it was introduced firefox has snagged about 20%, though I have no 
RJT> way of knowing how accurate those figures are. 

CA> Not very accurate at all apparently? 

CA> http://informationweek.com/story/
CA> showArticle.jhtml?articleID=159902316 

CA> Looks like FF is about 6% as of last month.

Still not bad considering the short time that it's been around.

RJT>> Fast forward a couple of years. Now they have a browser 
RJT>> capability test" that you have to get past to use the site. 

CA>> "Browser sniffer" - few of these are complete and many are
CA>> quite poorly written. 

RJT> Indeed. 

RJT>> Their list of "ok" browsers also includes Mozilla,
but my copy of 
RJT>> firefox, which is based on Mozilla, wouldn't get past it.

CA>> I'm not familiar enough with FF to know where to change the 
CA>> browser ident but there _should_ be a way to have FF ident as 
CA>> 'mozilla'?

RJT> There is, and I don't think I'd have too much trouble finding it, 
RJT> but should that really be necessary?

CA> Yes because there are too many browsers out there that do not fully
CA> support cascading style sheets and other W3C recommendations that 
CA> are now 3 years old. It's those who write browsers that are messing 
CA> with you as much, or more, than webmasters.

RJT>> It barfed on the browser name, it barfed on the version number 
RJT>> (!), and it barfed on such things as me not having flash 
RJT>> enabled/installed. Excuse me? WTF to I need that for? 

CA>> FLASH is a pain but to be objective the lack of uniformity of the 
CA>> 'majors' for embedding a player doesn't help web builders write 
CA>> the proper codes for rm, wmv, or mpg videos. FLASH OTOH is reputed 
CA>> to have remained more consistent from version to version and is 
CA>> quite compact for both sound and video. I'm only trusting other 
CA>> people's opinions on this since I don't use any FLASH on my 
CA>> webpages. :-)

RJT> Well, I don't use it in my browser, nor in any of the pages I keep 
RJT> here, so I guess we're even. :-)

RJT>> So I'll find my info elsewhere... 

RJT>> You could talk to those guys, and see if they can possibly 
RJT>> understand the problem with the site, and if they won't change 
RJT>> it, then that speaks volumes toward their attitude in general, 
RJT>> and they are probably best avoided anyhow.

CA>> Again, it's sloppy web design/code and shouldn't be done that way 
CA>> but with 95% of the people's browsers accepting the code getting 
CA>> them to spend more time/money on the website might be like the 
CA>> flea thinking it owns the dog. ;-)

RJT> Maybe. Or maybe they'll guess that they're seriously alienating 
RJT> folks and at least consider looking into it. I can't ask for much 
RJT> more than that.

CA> Many do look into browser compatibility when designing their
CA> webpages but it is really discouraging that those who write the
CA> browsers can add 'features' and eye-candy but can't accomodate
CA> years old coding recommendations from the W3C. FF is as guilty of
CA> this as the others are btw. 

I look at it this way...   It's a "pull" medium,  I find what I
want or I look someplace else and find it there instead.  If I want what
somebody is offering,  then great.  If not,  they lose.  Traditional media
are "push",  they put it out there and you take it,  and the
choices are few.  This _should_ lead to a fairly radical difference between
one and the other,  but there are still a lot of folks who don't have a
clue.

Have you ever read the cluetrain manifesto?  I got the book,  first,  but
I'm pretty sure that the whole book is online at this point.  That pretty
well summarizes a lot of my thought processes on this stuff,  and explains
why those who continue to try and push are doomed to fail.

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