[Talk] Web Browser Exclusion

[Enno Davids]

On Sun, Dec 08, 2002 at 11:08:02PM +1100, David J N Begley wrote:
|Earlier today, Glenn Satchell wrote:
|> > From: Greg Black <gjb at gbch.net>
|>
|> I don't know the exact numbers but IE had something like 80-85% of the
|> browser market at one stage (maybe a copuple of years ago).
|
|Latest figures I've seen (depending on who's doing the measuring) have IE at
|94% or thereabouts and dropping ever so slightly every couple of months.  But
|if that alone was the logic, why would they even bother including Netscape?
|The fact that they include Netscape, but exclude anything that's Netscape
|compatible is what infuriates me.

We can expect Netscape figures to slowly rise again on the back of the AOL
desktop switching to Navigator in the US (from IE). Not a big surprise given
that AOL owns the whole mozilla effort these days. AOL is allegedly worth
about 1/3 of the US web surfing community and may be the only reason why
Netscape support is even still proacticed.

As to how to get siets to support open standards, I too have only negative
results to offer. I particularly enjoyed being called "arrogant and ill
informed" by the graphical artist/web developer of a prominent SBS program
when I complained once!

But, there is a ray of hope. In my role supporting the web servers at my
past contract I was able to influence the developer group to some extent.
And broader browser support was in there... This may be where AUUG members
can have the mosgt influence... at our places of work. Its a start.



Enno.