<quote who="Doug Foskey">
> I think you are going completely the wrong direction with what you have said
> above. At present Linux users are more computer Savvy than M$ Windoze users.
Just some comments on your response. First one being: Don't refer to Windows
as "M$ Windoze" to people who see it as their primary supportable user base,
and do not care for software politics. They won't get the 'joke', and will
tune out pretty fast.
Issues are interesting, name calling less so -> could you imagine a Labour
supporter on election day discouraging you from voting for "Howard the
Duck"? It may be funny, perhaps even accurate, but it's not convincing.
> The bank should be looking to support all potential users, not just the
> majority. In the long term, support for other systems could be increased
> as your support personnel become more experienced.
Remember that Internet Explorer has accounted for over 90% of browsers in
some studies. So, whilst that may mean they could be ruling out 10% of their
potential customers, I don't think that the extra expense to support or
develop (and train people to support and develop) for those platforms would
be very attractive to them.
Now that everyone is sufficiently amazed that I'm not interested in support
for Linux browsers... Here's two arguments that really matter:
1) "I will take my business elsewhere, such as..."
I said this to the National Bank, closed my account, and switched to the
Commonwealth, who had a reasonably compatible netbanking system. I told
them why I was switching, who I was switching to, and why I chose them.
Should I take credit for the National's new netbanking stuff? No, but I'm
sure it helped all of the other Blind/Netscape/Mac/Linux/Amiga/OS/2 users.
2) "My browser supports standards, your website does not..."
Don't bother telling them what you're using - they're only going to
support the big ones, and probably have office jokes about Netscape/
Mac/Linux/Amiga/OS/2 users anyway. However, if you tell them the benefits
of standards and accessibility, they might think twice about what they
offer, and who to. "Imagine if I couldn't send an email to you because the
software we used didn't speak the same language, wouldn't that be bad?"
It will be a very hard slog getting disinterested companies to support us.
It's just too hard, and we haven't given them a big enough incentive yet.
But there are other ways around it. :-)
- Jeff
--
"It's like having someone say to you, 'You should get back together
with your first wife. You guys were good together'. It's not that
simple." - David Byrne on Talking Heads
--
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