On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, David Mann wrote: ... > BTW the tutor who taught the DW course I went on last year was of the > opinion that you should only bother writing for MSIE. And he's done > pages for several high-profile businesses. ...
This opinion can be seen practiced at its best on Microsoft's web pages. When I tried to access certain pages on their web server from a HP-UX system, I regularly got a message advising me that I could only view this content with MSIE, and there really was no way of getting the desired information with Netscape. But the "Complain" button was working all right, so I sent them a nice message explaining that I only had HP-UX and Linux systems, and since they did not provide MSIE for these operating systems I could not read their pages. The only reaction I ever got from them (and I tried it several times), was an automated reply, plus a 6$ phone card in my letter box. When I designed web content for interactive multimedia learning and teaching modules a couple of years ago, one of the requirements was that the content should be equally accessible with a variety of common browsers, including of course Netscape and MSIE. One further requirement was that the content also had to be presented in a form useful to visually impaired people. Practically, this meant that for each and every figure and virtual experiment there had to be an equivalent replacement text explaining the matter in a sequence which could easily be read by the blind. These, and some other, requirements led to a mutual agreement between all participating parties about standards applying to the file formats. If someone can sell web programming which is exclusively MSIE-focused to high-profile businesses, I interpret that as a lack of awareness in these businesses' IT departments. I know how annoyed I am every time when I would like to get some product information from a company, and some blinking rotating flash-whatever frames-intro keeps me waiting. If I ran a business I would certainly not want to annoy people who are just trying to make a first contact with me... Cheers, Helmut. +----------------+ | Helmut Walle | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | 03 - 388 39 54 | +----------------+
