The need for IE-only sites? (was RE: [thelist] Identify a WebCrawler's request)

David Travis dwork at macam.ac.il
Tue Jul 6 17:20:05 CDT 2004


Hi Manuel,

This site started it's development process a year ago, when only IE provided
proper support for processing XSLTs with XMLs, this lead us to start working
with XMLDOM, and XMLHTTP objects, which are activeX objects available in IE
only, as you probably know.

Since this was the situation we kept our work focused on IE, and actually
tied the site with IE by using proprietary IE features, like DHTML APIs,
that exit (again) only for IEs.

Now, to be more specific to your questions:

a) If your users will be using IE6 to access the site, why is there a need
to look for non-IE users in the user-agent string?

Since I have no direct contact with my users I prefer to save the complaints
and redirect those non-IEs to a well designed page with clear instructions.

b) Any well coded site that works ok in IE6 cannot be too screwed in other
browsers. What's the worry?

This point was covered above.

c) Related to b), there are zillions of sites that work perfectly with and
without IE. What's so special about yours? What IE-only features did you
code for?

Again, covered above.

This site serves a specific group of people, therefore I think it is a wise
decision to focus on a common browser, and require users to have it.
Developing the site to be compliant with all browsers will make the
development process twice long (if not more than that).

Your argument may be correct when you are dealing with clean HTML, but this
site is FULL of client processing to ease the overload on the server.

I have to add that even with clean HTML I found a lot of problems when I
tried to build a simple HTML page with Hebrew in it and watch it using
Netscape 7.0. borders, padding, aligning, and so on were not 100%, and
starting to deal with those bugs is simply a waste of time...


Thank you,
David.


-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Manuel Gonz?lez
Noriega
Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 10:41 PM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: The need for IE-only sites? (was RE: [thelist] Identify a
WebCrawler's request)

El mar, 06-07-2004 a las 22:28, David Travis escribió:
> Dear list,

> For all the rest... I am sorry, but no one can ignore the fact that IE
> rules! Over 90% use IE (from ver 4 to 6). I am aware of all security
issues,
> and performance and blah... blah... blah... but the bottom line is that
the
> user does not care about it and USES internet explorer...
> 
> I created a site for internal uses, where I can set "system requirements"
> for browsing it.
> 
> I guess there are better browsers, but for this project I simply don't
> care...

David, there are some interesting issues to discuss about this
situation, if you will

a) If your users will be using IE6 to access the site, why is there a
need to look for non-IE users in the user-agent string?

b) Any well coded site that works ok in IE6 cannot be too screwed in
other browsers. What's the worry?

c) Related to b), there are zillions of sites that work perfectly with
and without IE. What's so special about yours? What IE-only features did
you code for?
 
 

-- 
Manuel trabaja para Simplelógica, construcción web
(+34) 985 22 12 65         http://simplelogica.net 

-- 
* * Please support the community that supports you.  * *
http://evolt.org/help_support_evolt/

For unsubscribe and other options, including the Tip Harvester 
and archives of thelist go to: http://lists.evolt.org 
Workers of the Web, evolt ! 



More information about the thelist mailing list