More browsers = more pain, particularly if you are coding to the 'bare metal' of each browsers maximum capabilities although some of the frameworks make it easier to abstract away the truly odd bits.
On one hand, more browsers == more innovation and competition, but it may be years before an innovative feature can be relied upon. Its still a variation on "Write Once, Test everywhere". Keep in mind, some of the cool stuff we see now could be done in IE4/5/6 if you were willing to stick to the IE only rules (and use Visual Interdev to develop). Years ago a web standard was an idealistic expression of what 'should' happen, not what actually did. I think Firefox has gone along way toward making 'Web Standards' actually mean something. Given a choice, I'd rather develop for one browser, but since there isn't one, then everybody should be included (As a safari user I've suffered much discrimination, do you know how hard it is to buy travel insurance online in Australia with a Mac???). A lot of the reasons why people wouldn't use flash and stuck to HTML are ironically no longer valid, I would suggest the average complex JS RIA is no smaller, more printable, searchable or accessible than a Flash/Flex application! So then, it gets down to: 1. Do you trust Adobe (the company) with your future? 2. Do you trust Flex (the technology)? 3. Is the right flash runtime version (and later upgrades) available to your customers? 4. Do you have anybody who knows how to use Flex? If I were building an significant app for the ages (5 years or more), I'd probably be sticking with HTML+JS+DOM+CSS. Who knows where Flex may be in that time (and Adobe for that matter). On Sep 8, 9:30 am, Michael Neale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think it does - it certainly affects decisions about what to use - > if you know you will be testingi pains, you go with things that you > know will work (which means favouring standards). > > On Sep 8, 8:20 am, Christian Catchpole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > > I'd like the think that more browsers should help make it a commodity > > market. When IE dominated sites assumed that you were using IE on > > Windows. Anyone else must just be strange. So this encouraged > > Microsoft to embrace and extend. > > > Do more browsers encourage "tolerant" web sites? I'd like to think > > so, but I understand it's not that simple. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
