[Glastonbury] here we stand... on a rocky shore...

[Sean Miller]

Ian Dickinson wrote:

>multiple different platforms. And if 90% of their traffic comes from
>IE-on-windows, it's easy to understand why the designers might
>optimise to that platform and not pay too much heed to other users'
>needs. Note I say understand not condone - it's very frustrating for
>those of us in the minority segment, and I have no end of sites that
>give me a worse user-experience just because I'm using FireFox. And I
>  
>
That is as may be, but most web design forums put cross-browser 
compatability high on their agenda...

The ones that just design for IE are being lazy... because *and this 
important* the truth is that the W3C standards (which is what one 
*should* be adhering to) are followed far more closely by Opera and by 
Mozilla/Firefox than they are by Microsoft.

IE is increasingly being seen as "the bad guy"... the one that doesn't 
conform... the one that web designers have to "hack" in order to 
accommodate.

>Personally, I work about 60%-40% on Linux and Windows respectively.
>But in fact, the underlying operating system isn't that big a factor,
>since I spend most of my time in cross-platform development tools
>(like Eclipse) building cross-platform apps (either web-based or
>Java-based). I thinks this makes me rather an ambivalent Linux geek,
>since I'd actually be happier for the operating system to be
>commoditised and get the heck out of my way!
>  
>
I think cross-platform issues are being dealt with.  Java is a good 
example of a technology that makes the platform redundant... as long as 
there is a JRE your application should run.

Sean