[thelist] AOL/netscape was:Netscape 6 loads page twice

Jamie Madden jamie at bayou.com
Fri Dec 8 15:52:33 CST 2000


here, here.  to go even one step further and to tie it directly back to 
development and browser war:

The reason people except BSOD's and incompatibilities and the like is that 
developers (web, software, etc... yes, that includes us) have told them 
that this is to be expected instead of trying to fix problems.  You should 
not expect something you pay good hard money for to break down for no 
apparent reason (hell, you shouldn't even expect it if it is 
apparent.)  When I buy a car I wouldn't expect that it would carry everyone 
of my friends except Joe.  If I bought a microwave and it popped the hell 
outta pop corn but ceased to function when i tried to nuke a potato i'd 
take it back.  The reason rational people expect this in a computer related 
genre is that they've been told all along that this is gospel and they 
didn't have the initiative (or they didn't have the intellectual capacity) 
to check it out for themselves.  And, theoretically, they shouldn't have to.

The state of affairs in the computer related industry is to build just good 
enough a product to beat the competition not to actually build a fully 
functional product.  And then we tell the buying public that it's not our 
fault it's the browser and the browser manufacturer says it's not our fault 
it's the OS and the OS says it's not our fault it's the hardware and the 
hardware people say...

You get the picture.

And to tie it all back together.  If your page breaks in NN6 or IE5 or any 
other browser IT'S YOUR FAULT.  We have been given some rules to work 
by.  It's true that sometimes we have to fudge one way or another to 
accomplish our goals but we should never do it at the complete exclusion of 
the rules that, directly or indirectly, we helped to write.  If we follow 
our own rules to the letter then we can truly say it's the browsers 
fault.  until then there is no one to blame but ourselves.

Meanwhile back in the real world...
...stepping down off his soap box, jamie continues to write and ugly, ugly 
hack, to make his drop down menus work, that would never, ever validate...

jamie


>To drill down ever more, I think its BS how computers aren't utopia. I 
>mean, all we used to hear about was how great the Internet was going to be 
>for the average Joe, how computers were going to empower the User, how 
>computers would help us live a more productive, usefull, happy lifestyle. 
>I mean, computers *should* be utopia, but they're not. Why? Because users 
>have become conditioned to accept blue screens of death, rebooting their 
>computer, data loss, lack of ease of use. To me thats like accepting the 
>fact that I'm a slave to technology, I can't do anything about it, so why 
>cause a stir? Acceptance of this kind of status-quo well.. sucks. And I, 
>personally,  thinks thats bullshit. Thats why I talk about alternative 
>OS's, software, ideas and that kind of shit.. and thats why i preach 
>it(some would say too much ;) so often and so loudly.
>
>At any rate, this spills into a whole different topic, one I'd be happy to 
>share with you off list if you're interested :)
>
>Thanks for your opinion, which I respect - its just that mine is different :)
>
>.djc.
>
>
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