Jan 26
Why follow W3C standards?
2004 at 01.18 pm posted by Veerle Pieters
My post from yesterday about my blog following W3C standards is still warm and maybe you’re asking yourself this question ”why”? Well here’s why: One of the biggest national newspapers “Het Laaste Nieuws” recently redesigned its website and look what happens if you’re using a web browser like Safari or Mozilla etc, In other words browsers who promote standards.
First you’ll get the page with all the content and a few seconds later you’re transferred to a page that says ”You’ll need Microsoft Internet Explorer or an Internet Explorer Compatible browser to view this site” As a web builder I know that it isn’t that hard to follow the W3C guidelines so I wonder who made such a mess of that page that isn’t viewable in a browser like Safari. If you call yourself a web developer the first thing you need to know is that the web is for everybody and not just MSIE users. This categorizes in one of the two things I really hate ;-) The other one that drives me mad are full screen window popups on Flash websites :-S What’s yours ?
15served
1
I’m not really a web-designer, but I know enough of it, that Internet Explorer always give trouble to test the site that you’re building. Even in DreamWeaver, it’s always inpredictable. Safari en Mozilla are almost easy to build for.
All I want to say, is that I really don’t understand that so called web-developers always take IE as a standard. So now you know what’s driving me mad, when I surf on the World Wide SpiderWeb of Bill Gates!!!! :x
2
I would never create a site like this even if the client thinks it is unnecessary. I would grab the challenge to make it look OK in as much browsers as possible. As a web designer you just start from the standards of W3C and then you check what needs fixing in web browsers that don’t follow the standards strictly like IE. And if you do that the fixing will be minor, even for IE. If IE is your starting point then you could get results like this website.
3
Looks like they need a competent designer, Veerle ;-)
4
HLN does know about it (and they consider it as a top-priority bug).
They make website first for IE and than they start for other browsers (If you complain :-) ). With the same excuse as always, IE has the biggest market-share.
5
Actually it is a lot more work if you start in IE. Probably time where the client gets charged for ;-) So why make it difficult I wonder, just because people don’t know better?
6
I have the same frustration. If I have the time I like to email the “webdesigner”.
This time I got an reply.
quote:Beste,
Helemaal geen moeite kosten klopt dan ook weer niet helemaal. Ik geef je
wel gelijk dat er nog andere browsers zijn, en dat we onze site hiervoor
moeten optimaliseren. Dit gebeurt vanaf 09/02. Realiteit is echter dat
meer dan 95 % van onze surfers met internet explorer surft, vandaar.
Maar wees gerust over een 2-tal weken zou dit ook met safari moeten
werken.
Translation:
Dear,
Totally no effort at all isn’t entirely the truth. I would have to agree with you that there are other browsers and we have to optimize our website for it. This will happen on Feb. 9th. In reality however, 95% of our visitors are using Internet Explorer, that’s why. But be sure, in about 2 weeks it should also work in Safari.
7
In the Netherlands there is an initiative to make at least governmental sites accessible to lots of people. As in ‘not only for IE’ but all kinds of users. I’m not sure if Belgium has something similar, though. http://www.drempelsweg.nl
8
I just hate it when they tell me that I can’t view a site because I use some other browser than Explorer. Webdevelopers should now better.
9
Safari has a hidden debug menu, which can be used to simulate different user agents.
From the terminal: defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
Then start/restart Safari, use the Debug->User Agent menu to select the desired user agent.
10
Micheal: Cool tip, didn’t know that thanks.
11
I think web is place of CHOICES and now we haven’t lot of choice anywhere…
12
Looks like they’ve got it “fixed” now… The page displays in Firefox 0.9.2, but there are some lingering Flash glitches. :: sigh ::
13
Changing the user agent doesn’t really solve the problem, though, because it will only raise the percentage of IE users in the log files to an even higher level.
14
As the mozilla foundation said, we’ve got to take back the web. Got to take action too with some similar action. The risk of having this kind of script though would be a discrimination. Standards by definition should be accessible by all…
15
In (at least) the USofA, there have been lawsuits by disabled users not being able to access content b/c of shinanagins like this.
I am not litigation happy, but maybe this will help influence good accessbile designs. Or is that too much to hope for???
Dream on anon, dream on ....