From: Barry Lee Brisco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> and maintenance of a web site that someone else designed. I discover that
> the original designer never bothered to check their work in browsers other
> than Netscape, and that their pages look like hell (layout all screwed up)
> in MSIE v4 for example.
I've just sent an email off to the HMS Beagle people who produce a
very nice science news site which they announce as optimised for
Netscape 3. The Enter button for getting into their site doesn't work
using my Netscape 3.04.
They told me that the "compatability problem is largely down to
some of the latest technology we are using" and suggested I
upgrade to 4.0.
I told them that wearing my Web developer hat, I don't usually
bother with sites that have optimisation messages as it's usually
indicative of other problems in design and structure resulting from
not considering one's audience.
The point of the Web (and particularly of online publications and
news services), after all, is to make information available to as
broad an audience as possible, so it is not really appropriate to try
and fix on the one browser, let alone a single version.
We run a variety of different browers on the six machines in this
office, with different screens, window sizes etc just show we can
check and eliminate the more egregious browser-specific errors. It
can be very *very* hard getting the idea through to clients that their
particular setup does not reflect the Web world at large, particularly
those clients who have come through the publishing world where
control is down to the point level.
*SIGH* I really hope the Beagle people take my response nicely,
as they've got a grand looking site, but I'm not going to bother
linking to it if it's just going to cause hassles for a lot of my site
visitors.
Ah well, it's all par for the course...
Cheers,
Vicki
P.S. Barry -- I see Jared Diamond in "Guns Germs and Steel" calls
New Zealand a "mini-continent" -- geographical recognition of our
impotance at last!! :-)
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