[thelist] Site check: Staples.com

Shawn K. Quinn skquinn at speakeasy.net
Tue Sep 20 00:29:33 CDT 2005


On Tue, 2005-09-20 at 14:49 +1000, Ken Schaefer wrote:
  [I wrote:]
> > 
> > On Mon, 2005-09-19 at 23:06 -0400, M. Seyon wrote:
> > > And you make this statement based on the fact that you have:
> > 
> > - found their Web site unusable due to a patently obvious lack of
> > testing and/or a very erroneous assumption that everyone uses the exact
> > same browser, operating system, and hardware that was used to test it
> > the one time it was tested.
> > 
> > I have the answers: Dump the Javascript for the same redirect executed
> > *on the server*. Don't dump the user into an error message about cookies
> > until they actually need to have cookies turned on (cookies are barely
> > acceptable for shopping carts, however I emphatically *should not* have
> > to accept cookies to merely browse or, worse, just to find a
> > brick-and-mortar store location).
> 
> Sounds like a complete lack of understanding of how enterprise web
> applications are built these days...
> 
> Half the stuff is OOB functionality that you can't change (either because
> it's proprietary, or you don't have time/budget), then you need to interface
> into all sorts of legacy backend systems, and then you need to quantify the
> benefits of the application (and at the same time, possibly deliver a better
> experience to your users: amazon.com uses cookies too you know).

And there is absolutely none of this that requires Javascript to do a
redirect.

> Where exactly do we spend /another/ couple of hundred thousand dollars
> on extra staff to customize all of this for the 2 

Try 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000, if you're just going to pull a
number out of thin air.

> users in the world that have a similar setup to you, and who wouldn't
> generate a bean in revenue for us anyway?

Assumes facts not in evidence. It's rather well known that letting any
old site run Javascript on your system is poor security practice (this
is, after all, how Microsoft's excuse for a browser got the nickname
Internet Exploiter among other less than flattering names). So, over
time, I will have more money in my pocket than the guy that just spent
$300 on the latest version of Microsoft's latest OS and $100 to $1,000
to get all the viruses cleaned off his computer *again*.

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn at speakeasy.net>



More information about the thelist mailing list