[Sussex] Free Opera registrations

[Steve Dobson]

Geoff

On Wed, Aug 31, 2005 at 06:01:21PM +0100, Geoffrey Teale wrote:
> Steve Dobson wrote:
> > No!  Here I have to disagree.  I have a very valid reason for taking
> > Opera up on their offer.  I like to design web pages that "Work with
> > Any Browser".  I'm sure you support that campaign.  Therefore the more
> > browsers I can use to test my sites with the more I am likely to design
> > my web pages browser neutral.
> 
> Ah.. but that isn't a choice, you're just using everything then.

Yes it is a choice.  I _choose_ to make my site as compatible as possible
with all browsers, or at least, as many as I can test with.  If I just
designed my site to work with Firefox then I would be forcing my choice
upon my users.  I would be taking away there freedom of choice - where
is the choice in that?

> I can see from a technical standpoint this is useful,

Of course testing is technical process and the more you do the better
a system is.

> but it isn't actively 
> choosing proprietary software above free software.

Well I've only added Opera to my test set when they offered it to me
for free.  Of course they are doing this to try and get people to buy
it.  At $39 it isn't expensive, as proprietary software goes - but I will
not be buying it.  If I get and e-mail from them an e-mail telling me that
my free license is about to expire and do I want to buy I will tell them
no, that I got Opera only for testing purposes while free (as in beer).
If Microsoft were to of a Free (as in beer) version of IE for Linux I
may use that too for testing purposes.

I think I do choose Free Software, because the browser I use is
Firefox.  

> Equally I would suggest that the best way to support interoperability 
> would be to rigidly stick to the W3C recommendations and regularly make 
> complaints to the writers of all browsers that don't comply with them.  :-)
> 
> That's a much better long term strategy than just tearing your hair out 
> trying to navigate through 20 different browser DOMs.

Come on, Geoff, move into the real world.  I do follow the W3C specs and
recommendations, but they are not all inclusive.  There are parts that are
open to interpretation, and one browser's interpretations are no more or
less valid than another. There will always be arguments about which 
interpretation is the "correct" one.

By testing I find out were browsers differ and then changed my XHTML
(which is still complient) to get all browsers to do sensible things with
the same source.

Steve

-- 
Blue paint today.
		[Funny to Jack Slingwine, Guy Harris and Hal Pierson.  Ed.]
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