В 23:06 +0200 на 27.09.2011 (вт), tegskywalker[@nospam] написа:

> 
> Trying to portray IceCat or Iceweasel as a "better" alternative to Firefox  
> doesn't really help their cases if many websites still sniff out user agents  
> and they have issues with these offshoot browsers trying to advertise. How  
> about if you were to install IceCat or Iceweasel for your mother and her  
> banking sites get screwed up? She would probably want you to uninstall it and 
>  
> just use normal Firefox.

IceCat reports itself as "(like Firefox/some.version)", so user-agent
sniffing should be successful. The user-agent could be set from the
"general.useragent.override" setting in about:config. You could do it
like it is done in IceCat, by adding "(like Firefox/some.version)" at
the end.


> 
> I installed LibreOffice 

[...]

> they complained about the issues 

[...]

> their response was "why didn't you just install Office? You put  
> this weird program that doesn't look at all like Office and is broken. Next  
> time just give me Office"

You probably have done this, but try to explain to them that software
has bugs. It does not matter how it looks, who made it or is it free
software or proprietary. Sooner or later they are fixed.

> 
> P.S. The above discussion happened when they wanted Adobe Illustrator and I  
> said to try Inkscape instead since it was free. Their response was "I don't  
> want cheap knockoffs like with that office program. Just give me Illustrator  
> because that is what the industry professionals use and it just works."

The easiest answer is "I don't know how to work with/install this
program", without explanation. This works if you don't want to do it or
know that explaining (again) will not help. I usually tell people that I
can't help them with proprietary software, and they are on their own.
This could lead to frustration and bad relationship. My experience shows
people don't understand free software. Even if they get the idea, they
don't see a problem in using proprietary software as well. They want
what everybody else is locked in to, the so called standard in the
field. And that program is a standard for only one reason - it uses
proprietary file formats or protocols, so the user is locked in. After
all proprietary software using publicly available file formats and
protocols is pretty much doomed, because users can and will switch to
another program at one point. People just want something that works and
don't care. As long as it works. If they have a problem with a program,
for example some restriction, they observe it as a technical limitation,
not as imposed one by the developers. That is mainly, because they are
non-technical (computers in mind only) people.

It's not easy, but try to explain that. Hope it helps.

Reply via email to