[WEB4LIB] Re: browser differences

[Rich Kulawiec]

On Fri, Aug 02, 2002 at 09:28:52AM -0700, Drew, Bill wrote:
> all I asked was what might cause a problem with Opera.  Now I am getting
> raked over the coals for my design.  The webpage is designed for our primary
> patrons, students and faculty at SUNY Morrisville.  The standard browser
> here is IE6.  The standard platform is the IBM ThinkPad laptop or IBM
> desktop using Windows 98 soon to be Windows XP.

Blech.  I'd recommend upgrading to Linux or one of the BSD platforms.
It runs on the same hardware, avoids all the M$ licensing issues which
just went into effect, it's peer-reviewed, it's open-source, it's free,
it has some terrific applications (e.g. Mozilla, OpenOffice), several
orders of magnitude more virus-resistant, and quite a bit more secure.

Even if you stick with Windows, you should at least move to a
standards-compliant browser like Mozilla.  (Not to mention all
the advanced features that it offers.)

> As far as the resize goes, that is there for better display on our public
> computers in the library.  If you have another suggestion to make it display
> full screen on just our library computers, please tell me so.

Point those machines to a different home page which does just that.

> As far as Flash goes, how can one say it is not needed on our webpage?  It
> is part of our marketing of the library as a high tech part of the college
> community.  That makes it necessary to us.

I'm sorry, I don't buy this argument.  The Flash is just eye candy,
and bloated eye candy in a proprietary format at that.  I recommend
reading:

	http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html

> The scrollable banner quits after a short period of time.

Understood: personally, I still find it extremely annoying.  Others may not.

> I have looked at our log files and less than .25 % of visitors to our site
> in the last year have use Amaya. 

That's not the point.  The point is that your page doesn't look good in
a standards-compliant browser, of which Amaya is a pretty good example
(mostly because it's authored by the W3C).

> I do know that all pages on our site work within in Lynx except for the pull
> down menus.  The pulldowns are not necessary for getting to the main links.

That's good: but why not make the menus work, too?

> As far  as validation, the add ons to Dream Weaver are based on the W3C
> standards and on tidy.

But this does not explain why -- if this page passed DW's cleanly -- it
does not pass those in the current version of tidy or the W3C validation
page.   Perhaps DW's are out of date.

---Rsk