[thelist] Re: Need some cross-browser propaganda links

[Allen Schaaf]

At 10:05 AM 5/4/04 - Graham Leggett wrote:

[snip]

>It is seldom business sense to annoy potential customers, because an 
>annoyed potential customer talks to other potential customers, and the 
>fallout that results is huge. One of the local banking conglomerates here 
>did a study of their customer service, and found that due to the resulting 
>word of mouth, each "service related incident" resulted in them losing one 
>customer per incident. People in technical positions would be well served 
>to learn some marketing skills to put their designs into perspective.

Ford found this out in the 1920's when they did a study that showed a 
satisfied customer told, on the average, 8 other people while a 
dis-satisfied customer told, on the average, 22 other people.

The whole cross-browser/form v.s content sink hole is only going to get 
bigger as more countries like China adopt Linux as the base standard for 
their governments. People who use it at work are going to want the same 
thing at home. So Gnome, Konqueror, Mozilla and who knows what else start 
playing. Then add Apple back in the mix - yeah, I know only 3%, but there 
is a move afoot in the graphics and audio pro segments back to the Apple 
because of OSX.

Proof of this is I've always hated Apples from the get. In fact my favorite 
description of pre-OSX is: "Macs speak with forked data."

Started with a Trash 80 and moved to an IBM clone in 82. However, I'm going 
to get one soon for my technical writing and for the ease of use of a 
terminal window in the core FreeBSD.

One last thing, the web site work I do is primarily for NGOs and they don't 
have the money or staff to run a full templating engine and most certainly 
not the skills needed. They barely have enough chops to use Dreamweaver. 
But they have some staff time and volunteer labor to do things like simple 
site maintenance - post meeting dates, news releases, etc., which is the 
vast bulk of the work. So they use Dreamweaver and I fix the most obvious 
problems.

Anyone have better suggestions for this kind of situation?

Thanks,


Allen Schaaf
Sr. Technical Writer

Who says bad manuals aren't a risk to your life?  Just ask the passengers 
of the jet where the engine caught fire because the company's maintenance 
manual was wrong about how to install one key bolt.  (NTSB Report on GE CF6 
engine fire, American Airlines flight 574, July 9, 1998. 
<http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/1999/AAB9903.htm>)