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

David Travis dwork at macam.ac.il
Wed Jul 7 14:04:13 CDT 2004


Consider this browser filtering a "system requirements" list of the site.
There is nothing wrong in "system requirements" when it comes to games,
right? That's the same thing. My site requires a lot of features I found to
be available in IE.

Besides, most companies don't have Linux versions of their software. It is
not wrong to say that you develop to a specific platform.

Again... Standards are great, when it is cost effective (Tom, that's what I
had in mind when said "think business") to stick to them. But to achieve
non-HTML effects in all browsers requires developing twice... Since my site
is to be used by specific users I find it reasonable to require them to use
a specific browser.

Not only this, I can tell you that most users use XP machines, so I can be
90% sure that they already have IE6. Guys, this is all part of the whole
picture...

And just to clarify one issue, if this was a commercial site there is no
doubt I'd create it to support most browsers.

Here in Israel we are always complaining that browsers are not designed to
handle right-to-left languages (even with dir=rtl there are bugs), and
that's our problem here. But the advantage we have here (over US and Europe)
is that MOST MOST MOST users here use IE. That's a fact too, so we can allow
ourselves to ignore other browsers when it comes to solutions like mine (I
think I didn't say it is an E Learning platform).

I must admit that now the discussion is far more interesting than it was
before!

Thanks,
David.

-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Simon Perry
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 7:18 PM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: Re: The need for IE-only sites? (was RE: [thelist] Identify a Web
Crawler's request)

David Travis wrote:

>Hi Chris,
>
>The baker metaphor is interesting... I imagine what the browser would say
to
>his user after visiting the site... "Hey, Bill, don't visit this site
>again... it serves me XMLs and XSLTs to process! I am the client! This is
>not a service!"...
>  
>
Lets try some other analogies then...

Imagine a shop that

Actively discriminates against 1 in 10 visitors and does not let them in.

Forces the other 90% to use a torch, not provided by the shop, so that 
they can actually see what is on offer.

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