Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2001 09:59:03 +0000 From: Paul Robinson <paul@akita.co.uk> To: Nils Holland <nils@tisys.org> Cc: "Walter C. Pelissero" <walter@pelissero.org>, Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: NatWest? no thanks Message-ID: <20011101095903.B43740@jake.akitanet.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <20011031210224.A710-100000@howie.ncptiddische.net>; from nils@tisys.org on Wed, Oct 31, 2001 at 09:10:34PM %2B0100 References: <15328.13403.591620.246277@hyde.lpds.sublink.org> <20011031210224.A710-100000@howie.ncptiddische.net>
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OK, this one got me fired up, and I suspect this will turn into a flamewar if we're not careful - if you want to tell me I'm a cretin or send me rude messages, please do so off-list. For the record I'm a 'nix user and developer and have been for about 7 years now. I'm writing this in mutt whilst ssh'ed into a FBSD box from my FBSD laptop. I spend most of my professional life these days writing the tricky stuff on large, complicated, true full-on application-style websites. No, I don't do the HTML, I do the stuff that makes things work. Please, read on if you want to know why I think IE-only compatability is a good thing for the user. On Oct 31, Nils Holland <nils@tisys.org> wrote: > Seriously: I have seen a few sites that kept complaining that my browser > (either Konqueror 2.2.1 or Mozilla 0.9.5) are not supported, but when I > told these browsers to disgusie as something else, I mostly noted that the > page displayed without any (or only with minor) problems. When some online Had you considered that there was a load of Javascript or even Java that was supposed to be running on your machine to help keep the underlying functionality of the site going, and that because you're not running it, you are going to cause problems for yourself, and potentially for the site admins? Do you honestly think that there are people out there who deliberately close markets and channels and make their site unavailable to you just to annoy you? Your logic is severely flawed. > I always thought that any website (including the that started this thread) > has an interest in being compatible with as many systems as possible, thus > being accessible for the broadest range of people. But if some website > tells me it's not compatible with what I use, then I'll take that as an > invitation to leave and go somewhere else. As a customer, *they* depend on > me more than I depend on them, I think... Great, I hope you do go somewhere else, so I don't have to spend time working out why the hell various things aren't working the way they should be whenever you come to my site, and you don't spend time phoning up support telling them everything is broken, thereby causing me to have to close 50 tickets on a Monday morning. The guy who started this thread complained about Natwest being 'facist' - perhaps they just want to run some Java crypto stuff to further enhance the site's security, in the same way Smile used to. Perhaps they need to track what he is doing, for the security of HIS account, by running a little JS. Perhaps they just want to make sure the site looks the way they expect it to, just to enforce their corporate image. Perhaps they tried to make it compatible with as many browsers as possible, but weren't able to because those browsers hadn't implemented various chunks of functionality. Browser compatability testing, believe it or not, is often not there entirely for your sake - it's sometimes there for people like us, on the backend. It's to ensure that the javascript and Java VM stuff is where you expect it to be (in the browser) and that it behaves the way you expect it to behave. This is particularly important in banking applications. It is nobody's intention to limit markets and get people to go elsewhere. When I put browser compatability checks on sites, it's in the vain effort that some developers somewhere will get a clue and perhaps put some decent javascript support into their browsers - I understand open source software are constrained in this effort, but Netscape should have switched to MS-compatibility a long time ago if they wanted to retain market share. Love or loathe the fact that on low budgets and tight delivery times, I'll always code for MS IE compatability, as that will always guarantee a decent marketshare available to us. So will any other web developer worth his salt. Just please try and understand how a conversation with a client might go: Bank: Why is half the UI functionality that we wanted missing Me: Well, that would have required me to use MS-specific stuff and that would be facist and not allow all users to use the site Bank: Why is the site so slow? Me: Well, because we can't run any Java or even Javascript in there for true open compatability, we have to do everything serverside. That means that the server load is tripled during peak preiods. Unfortunately, because we're trying to serve users over 12 timezones here, every minute of the day is a peak hour for somebody. It's OK - the site will be quicker next week after we spend another half million on hardware upgrades Bank: Wouldn't it just be easier and cheaper to make everything MS-specific Me: Well, yes, obviously, because that's what 98% of your customers currently use, and we could do all sorts of stuff to make things faster and so forth. Bank: So why haven't you done it? Me: Because then the other 2% would complain and winge like bitches that they can't use the site, or when it loads it doesn't work and everything looks broken Bank: Broken? We can't have people seeing our prestigious website broken! Is there any way we can stop them seeing that? Me: Browser compatability check? Sure we could do that.... Bank: Why aren't they using MS software anyway? Me: <snip long pro-open source debate and discussion> Bank: So let's summarise - we haven't got the application we wanted, it doesn't work as well as our competitor's, the whole thing is much slower and to rectify that we need more server hardware. We could just make the site IE-only thereby annoying between 1% and 10% of our users, but of those the majority will have access to IE anyway (Windows Netscape users), the whole project becomes cheaper, we get everything we want and so does the user, and we can check what the user is using, and if it's not compatible, we can stop them from seeing a broken website? Me: Yes. Bank: And when these user's browsers get IE-compatible, we can let them back in? Me: Yes. Bank: Do all of this, otherwise we don't pay you... Me: <shrug> OK. In summary - perhaps you and other KDE and Gnome users (including myself) should think of it as being that our software is not good enough for their site rather than their site being too lame for our software... 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