[Gllug] Argos site

[Sean Burlington]

Simon Stewart wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 11:19:05AM +0100, Tethys wrote:
> 
>>>I've asked about the office to try and get some information about
>>>_why_ it sucks so mightily. Currently, the reason appears to be that
>>>the client only mandated that the site should work on IE.
>>
>>Fine. But nothing in that mandate gives a reason to design an IE
>>*only* site. A corss platform site will, by definition, work in
>>IE, thus satisfying the customer's environment. But I don't need
>>to be telling you that. I need to be telling your support people...
> 
> 
> I am the support people too :) It's the designers who need telling,
> and I'm telling them. Better, I forward relevant support emails to
> suitable people. AFAIK, the Odean site was done more than a year ago:
> Mozilla was only a blip on the horizon, and IE was the dominant
> platform. I've not tested the site with NS4.x personally, but I'd be
> surprised if it doesn't work. It's not an excuse, I know.


IME one of the problems is that the designers only use IE - so they only 
test in IE

most of the html/dhtml guides are written by people who only use IE

while the w3 spces for html4 and CSS1 are highly readble (and I have 
managed to get dome designers to use rthese as a primary reference)

the CSS2 and xhtml specs are much more technical documents and are not 
structured in a way as to be quick references


there are a bewildering array of CSS bugs in the different browsers 
(making it very tricky to get consistent results) - actually the Mozilla 
site has a very nice annotated version of the CSS1 spec with comments on 
all known Mozilla bugs :)

while writing valid html isn't hard - correcting invalid html can take 
ages, and as the problems caused by dodgy code only show up in the later 
stages of many projects it can be a lot of work to fix the mess you find 
yourself in.


So I understand why this happens - and have sympathy with people who 
code for IE.

BUT - I think a lot of sites will be in trouble soon. IE is stagnating 
(I heard a rumour M$ want to start bundling a browser with MSN or 
selling for money)

Mozilla and others are good, secure alternatives

G3 /may/ make some changes

and with various web enabled devices arriving on the market, the 
dominance if IE may be declining.

in fact it is possible that designers may even have to start taking on 
board the concept of odd screen sizes, low color, no sound, no plugins 
etc (not to mention brail etc)

-- 

Sean


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