[Web4lib] re: Getting Rid of IE 6

[Thomas Dowling]

On 04/11/2009 11:39 PM, Tim Spalding wrote:
>> I'd like to second Lisa's perspective. Firefox's user agent add-on is
>> a direct response to exactly this kind of ostensibly well-intended but
>> overly paternalistic design. Just because you don't support a browser
>> doesn't mean your site might not be at least functional *enough* on that
>> browser for a user's purpose.

> Well, it depends.  Most library websites are basically "brochures," not
> complex web aps, but OPACs are—or at least should be—more ap-like.
> Interactive web aps. bump up against IE6 limitations all the time.
> There aren't many library programmers as competent as the GMail team,
> but GMail didn't start working with IE6 until 2007, three years after
> the product was created, and it required losing functionality and
> pushing Microsoft to release a JavaScript patch—not something most
> libraries can do.

Funny how Hotmail and Yahoo Mail managed to work with all those brain dead
browsers back in 1997.

GMail could have, but chose not to, offer a barebones and/or completely
server-side version that would have worked just fine with other browsers.  Fair
enough: coolness is a big part of the Google brand; being both cool and slicker
than Hotmail trumped extending support to some percentage of potential users.

Likewise, however you envision a library catalog, there is a core business of
entering a search and viewing results that is within the grasp of many old
browsers.  Are there truly non-degradable features of an OPAC-as-web-app that
provide so much benefit to a library that they merit shutting out X percent of
potential users?  If so, how big is X?  Is accessibility (in several senses of
he word) as important to us as coolness is to Google?


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu