Jeff Gutierrez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I'm with you on that but the reality is standards-compliant browsers > aren't the end of the story. Technology isn't the only consideration. > It's never just "tweaking something here in there" since there are > QA-related resources the need to always be considered. A reasonable > company providing consumer or enterprise services will not deploy an > application and claim to support every browser-OS combo because it's > "supposed" to just work. Everything must be QA-ed to limit any > gotchas in production.h
This was and is the old model. The support considerations aren't as uneconomical as before: because even IE6 is decent in terms of standards support, the QA requirements aren't as high. The possible killer is the knowledgebase -- you must have developers who are knowledgeable enough of standards and CSS to get it right. The gotchas are few and far between, and most of them are edge cases exercised only in cutting-edge designs, or those that require massive scripting or AJAX. But even in the scripting case, you have to consider that most of the time you'll be using such libraries and frameworks as the Google Web Toolkit to *abstract* that knowledge out. And most of these differences and/or quirks have been documented several times over on the web. It's not something one has to look for by oneself -- it's already documented if ever. BTW: if the situation were untenable, then why do such major sites as ESPN and CNN and Wired all have CSS-based layouts that work in *all* browsers, for example? > Furthermore, customer support is also a big issue. What will their > customer support team do if someone using Opera/MacOS calls for help? > It becomes a nightmare if your company needs to support hundreds of > thousands of users. Like I mentioned, this is the old model, where you code to multiple browsers. As long as you keep standards-compliance in mind, it'll work. Even if it's not pixel-perfect. Or if your fancy-schmancy animations are missing or what not. > Again, it doesn't end with "just tweaks." :) Of course it isn't "just tweaks" -- that was intentional. But it isn't as untenable as before. -- JM Ibanez Senior Software Engineer Orange & Bronze Software Labs, Ltd. Co. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://software.orangeandbronze.com/ _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
