On 6 Mar 99, Peter J. Schoenster wrote:
> I also bet that java just simply
> won't work properly on all browsers and all computers. I wonder what
> percentage of people will not be able to use this ... AND THIS IS YOUR
> NAVIGATION system. I just wonder what those numbers are. Has anyone
> pursued this and then said .. " yeah, we are quite willing to lose 11% of
> visitors to use this nifty java program".
My short answer to your question: "No no no no no no".
I have not found any solid numbers for the number of users who turn
Java off, or who don't have Java-compatible browsers to start with.
Doesn't really matter in any case; we can all agree that the number
is measurable, if not necessarily large.
I know *I* have it turned off, both at home and at work, because it
is unstable, slow and seldom if ever adds anything of value to my Web-
surfing experience even when it works (do we still say "surfing"? <g>)
I also know that one of my former clients, a government department
with 16,000 Internet users, disables Java on all browsers as a matter
of policy, because of (a) concerns about alleged security holes, and
(b) the cost for internal user-support -- responding to constant
calls crying, "My machine has frozen and nothing works anymore! It
went all nuts when I tried to load www.wretchedjavaexcess.com!" So
no Java there.
My accessibility credo is this: it is unacceptable to deliberately
exclude any measurable number of users from your site, simply to
provide some trivial technical toy for the rest. Coincidentally, I
just encountered this syndrome a few moments ago, visiting a site at
the request of its creator to do an assessment of it. The site, on
my machine, consisted of two frames: a photo in the right one and an
empty grey box in the left. The latter (according to the page
source) should contain an animated Java nav applet. There is no
alternative navigation. So I cannot use the site, period.
I have never seen a Java applet so compelling that I said, "hot damn,
time to turn the Java support back on!" And amongst the larger Web-
using public, I would say the sentiment is similar. Witness the
trend this past year on the part of large portals and other high-
volume sites towards pared-down, 'low-tech' designs... "It's the
CONTENT, stupid!", as all us clever folks on WC have known from the
start <g>
-----------
Brent Eades, Almonte, Ontario
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web: http://www.almonte.com/
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