[thelist] Tip o'the day (x2)

[Shirley Kaiser, SKDesigns]

I'm doing a copy/paste of a couple of comments here:

At 02:19 PM 02/16/2001, rudy wrote:
>i'll have to go back and read the screed, er, article again, but i got the
>distinct impression that they were advocating that *all* sites should adopt
>the same attitude -- which seems pretty silly, once you consider ecommerce
>sites

I'll clarify this and let you know that they DO specifically write about 
recognizing that not all sites will be able to jump on the bandwagon, using 
amazon.com and another site as examples.

I wrote about this at my weblog/column this morning, too, and I quoted that 
part. http://www.skdesigns.com/blog/

I know that my clients would go bonkers if their sites have problems in 4.x 
browsers, and many of us are in this position. I also feel, though, that 
Zeldman's publicity and more of this kind of publicity is what we need to 
shake things loose.

I think most of agree that we need standards, and not 3-5 years from 
now..... the sooner the better.

A week or two ago I also wrote in my weblog/column about this issue, and 
asked a question something like, "do we need a revolution to get 
standards?" How we go about working with the browser creators is quite 
important. We need to work as a team and have good rapport going.

What am I going to do personally? I'm going to continue to educate my 
clients, write articles, put information out there, and I'm undoubtedly 
going to work on a site that doesn't degrade gracefully for 4.x browsers - 
BUT I can't do that for clients who are paying me to have their sites work 
well to include the latest and greatest as well as 4.x browsers.

I got a note from someone recently who said that he works for a university 
and that they have to make sure sites work for 3.x browsers since that's 
what's still loaded on so many of the university computers. So we need to 
get the word out there to get these schools and businesses to upgrade their 
browsers. Opera 5 is a small program and can load on lots of computers that 
may not accommodate the big 2 (IE, Netscape).

So, Rudy, I don't feel there ARE easy answers to this situation. I DO feel 
that we need to continue to push for standards, and I'm hopeful that The 
Web Standards Projects latest press release and publicity helps a lot.

Fri Feb 16 07:23:21 2001 "aardvark" <roselli at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > From: "John Handelaar" <john at userfrenzy.com>
>[...]
> > http://www.alistapart.com no longer functions properly
> > on browsers which don't adequately comply with newer
> > standards. Offers a link to the WSP "Upgrade Campaign".
> >
> > Heh. I'll bet that second one will get a response >:-)
>well, yeah... it's good to see ALA coming over to the dark side...
>hell, it's only been 3 months (to the day) since evolt.org did the
>very same thing...

This is excellent to know. I'd love to hear of more out there who've done 
this. Let's provide examples of sites that work and are being used out 
there today.

I'd also love it if you or anyone else who's subscribed to I-Design to 
please write in a note to me there as the moderator, and we can discuss 
this for Tuesday's upcoming issue, too. I definitely plan to talk about it, 
but it would be great to have a thread going on it, too. That goes out to 
over 10,000 subscribers and gets good coverage. My email address as the 
I-Design moderator is mailto:design at audettemedia.com.

And what can we do to help within the evolt community? Let me know, OK?


Rudy continues:

>the best comparison i've heard to upgrading browsers was on another list
>where somebody said
>
>    >  Most users, particularly people who are not computer oriented,
>    >  do not download browsers. Just like you don't upgrade the
>    >  software that runs your microwave oven.
>
>
>all in all, i do sympathize with what ALA is trying to do, i just don't
>think they're going to be very successful converting the majority of web
>developers to adopt the same attitude on sites they do for money
>
>rudy

Rudy, this is certainly a tough, tough thing to pull off. I'd like to 
think, though, that if we keep pushing on this that we'll continue to make 
headway, and the more publicity and backers the better.

At the same time, there are millions out there who don't give a hoot what 
browser they use, are afraid to download, or are within a university, 
company, or organization where changing browsers takes practically an act 
of congress. So it's not an easy thing to crack, that's for sure.

Warmly,
Shirley
--
Shirley E. Kaiser, M.A.
SKDesigns          mailto:skaiser at skdesigns.com
Website Development http://www.skdesigns.com/
Pianist, Composer   http://www.shirleykaiser.com/
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