[Talk] Web Browser Exclusion

[John Dalton]

From: "David J N Begley" <d.begley at uws.edu.au>

> 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.

This sort of behaviour is a side effect of having graphic designers create
web sites.  The problem is that they learn to create visual products in
media over which they have complete control.  In a painting, or photograph,
or advertisement, the graphic designer has complete control over colour,
layout and all other elements of presentation.  It irks them that they
don't have the same degree of control over the presentation of a website,
if they're even aware that it may not look the same on other peoples
computers.

For this reason they pick the browsers with the greatest market share and
design for them, and try to prevent people from 'ruining their vision' by
looking at the site with something else.

I sometimes think my greatest acheivement at my last job (though you won't
see it listed on my CV) was educating a graphic designer I worked closely
with.  So here's my suggestion for a campaign - if you go and teach one
graphic designer (humbly, unix gurus don't have a monopoly on arrogance
or the conviction that we hold the 'one true knowledge' ;) ) that the web
is *not* just print media on a screen, then you'll have done more to stop
this than anything else you could do.

I still get email from the graphic designer I worked with - only last week
I was helping him configure Apache with mod_php under MacOS X - by hand,
the way $DEITY intended.  See, you might even get new converts to the
wonders of unix, too :)

J.

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  John Dalton    felius at ineedahug.arg (ROT13)    http://varrqnuht.net