New Zealand government websites should have the New Zealand government web standards applied to them, that Te Papa fails miserably :D
-----Original Message----- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rachel May Sent: Friday, 4 August 2006 12:28 PM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] Support for Macs and Firefox (was Support for IE5/Mac?) Seeing as we're on a big rant here I might as well add my 2c! Today I went to New Zealand's National Museum website - Te Papa. I searched for the information I was after (about native spiders) and came across the content and then - woah. The layout was all wrong (content was at bottom of the page) and all the content was overlapping so I couldn't even read it. This is a CSS driven site so I emailed them, let them know of the problem, because it shouldn't be too hard to fix. The reply I got said: "Unfortunately, the website is not designed to work with Safari, Firefox or Mozilla browser technology." This website is a government site - therefore should be support accessibility and web guidelines - and is our national museum and icon... -----Original Message----- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nick Gleitzman Sent: Friday, 4 August 2006 1:18 p.m. To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Support for IE5/Mac? (was Browser stats) SunUp wrote: >> > * refuse to support Macs and refer any compaints to the boss and >> the IT >> > department. >> >> Amen to that. There's no reason to be forced to support hardware it >> your department won't make allowances for testing on it. If they want >> you to support it, they need to make that possible. >> > > They couldn't care less. I'M the one trying to do The Right Thing and > support what I can, but they don't understand and have no desire to > understand about browser support. They support IE, that's it, and > that's all they care about. That's a head-in-the-sand attitude that is disturbingly widespread. The MS marketing machine has done an astonishingly successful job of convincing a significant proportion of the world that 'This is a PC, this is what it does. Don't think; just use it as it is.' It's understandable to get this attitude from home users who don't know better, but in a business environment it's just plain crazy. It's like opening a retail shop and then barring anyone who chooses to wear red socks from entering. Why would you willingly and knowingly ignore *any* source of potential business? I think it's an important part of our job as designers/developers to educate out clients, bosses, and site visitors about the medium. After all, whether we're freelancers or employees, aren't we hired because we know more about this stuff than the person hiring us? I *always* include, at the preproduction stage of a project, a clear explanation to the client that their site will NOT look the same to all of their visitors, and I show them samples of previous sites to illustrate the kind of (usually minor) variations they might expect - including sparsely or unstyled versions in older browsers. You need to find someone in management who cares enough about their business to allow you to reach the largest number of potential customers possible, and explain carefully and simply that their IE-only approach is hurting their business. If you can't, frankly, you should give careful thought to whether these are people that you want to work with long-term. Easy to say, I know, but you'll discover, eventually, that there's a lot of power in saying no - and you'll certainly sleep better at night. As a freelance, I'm now (thankfully) able to choose who I work with. If they get what I do, fine. If they don't, and they resist my approach as your bosses appear to be doing, I Just Walk Away. Some people just refuse to be educated, even if it's to their detriment. > I've had an enormous struggle getting our > department permission to use Firefox, and the rest of the staff here > (3000-odd people) don't have a choice because the Firefox site is > banned. Banned?! What for? What kind of nazis *are* these people? Is this some kind of perceived security issue? And when you say the FF site, do you mean using FF as a browser? > I feel badly that I can't do what I know I should be doing. > As of today, IE5/Mac users will get no styles at all when they view > our site. That's all I can do, and I guess it's better than it being > totally broken. It certainly is, but it's not *all* you can do. If you track back through this thread, you'll see that my original suggestion was to serve IE5Mac typographic styles but not layout styles - you can still make a web page that looks a whole lot nicer than a completely unstyled one; you just have to check that your content still works OK when it's delivered in linear fashion. > > sunny(fed-up-with-it) Don't be; it's a learning experience for you too - embrace it! And as dealing with and educating bosses/clients is probably drifting a bit OT for this list (although I think the concept of 'selling' Standards is perfectly relevant), feel free to contact me offlist if you'd like to continue the discussion. N ___________________________ Omnivision. 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