Boston Globe to Blogger — "Stop Using Opera" 465
PetManimal writes "Mac Daniels of the Boston Globe weighed in on a prickly debate involving the updated local mass transit website. The Globe's advice to one complainer named 'derspatchel': Stop using Opera. Derspatchel's response is to go medieval on Daniels' ass, and ask the question: Why should Opera users give up their browser? Quoting: 'I don't give two whoops about the "percentage of the Internet population" or whatever. I don't care if a website works on someone else's choice of browser; I care if it works or not on my choice of browser. It's a modern browser, it's in active development, and it's free. Once dev stops on the Opera browser and the last version becomes outdated and unable to support newer Web innovations, then I'll "stop using it." How's that, Chuckles?'" After a day the transit authority took the new site offline to "improve performance," reverting to the old version.
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Re:Protected blog, full text of post (Score:5, Insightful)
He's clearly ranting, and it doesn't all make sense.
If he doesn't care if pages work in someone else choice of browser why would anyone care if they work in his?
Personally, I do care that data which is presented as being a 'web page' should, in fact, be a web page. Web pages work in any browser, barring browser bugs.
So the question for me is, does this page not work in opera because the page is wrong, or because of a bug in Opera? I haven't used Opera in a long time, but it used to be a very solid browser with very few bugs when I used it, and I suspect it still is. Nonetheless, generalities don't solve the problem, specifics do. Is Opera correctly displaying a broken page, or is it displaying a good page improperly?
The page in question is far [w3.org] from a good web page, which reïnforces my suspicion, but still, does anyone know exactly the issue in question here?
Re:Protected blog, full text of post (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Protected blog, full text of post (Score:4, Insightful)
IE compatability with ":hover" is the real problem (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Protected blog, full text of post (Score:5, Insightful)
A 'good' webpage can be written in xhtml and include every scrap of CSS defined in the 2.0 standard. Unfortunately, the standards in question (including the older CSS specs) are ambiguous in some places and even if they weren't there is no browser that fully implements them. You can write a 100% standard and validated webpage that doesn't rendered properly (read according to standard) in any modern browser.
This is further complicated because the implementations are not just incomplete, but no two browsers implement the same parts. And if the browsers all implement a function, the ambiguity of the standard comes into play and you will often seen something rendered differently in each to a small or large degree. Depending on how critical the visual element in question is to your design, an unexpected difference in behavior can make a page unworkable or at least broken.
The result is that a web developer who is doing everything right (the site in question is obviously not, but I am not defending them, just setting the record straight) must do what he always has. He must test the page in an assortment of browsers and then work out the kinks for them. He must then hope that the resolution to those kinks will result in an implementation that will generally work in the browsers he has not tested.
Such is life. Even among those who do design according to standards and validate properly, there are those who only actually test and resolve issues in one browser. They know this will make most of the market work and following standards means that nobody can claim broken functionality is their fault.
Of course, accessibility standards for any government type site (city, county, state, federal, etc) should be required to work in all modern browsers. After all, I suspect that the blind do not constitute 0.6% of the browser market but those sites are required to be accessible to them. Are the blind somehow better than Opera users?
"If he doesn't care if pages work in someone else choice of browser why would anyone care if they work in his?"
Because Opera has support for features and technologies that rival any browser on the market (meaning it is as easy to support as any other browser) and 6 out of every thousand web users are using Opera. Considering that there are roughly 1,086,250,903 Internet users (per http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm [internetworldstats.com]) that means Opera's 0.6% of the browser market is about 6.5 million people. Using percentages immediately favors the biggest players and belittles the mid-sized and smaller players when you are referencing a sample the size of the browser market. When you are talking about nine zeros, reducing your figures to two zeros doesn't magically make for a clearer picture, it only serves to mask reality.
Re:Protected blog, full text of post (Score:5, Insightful)
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Enthusiasm doesn't equate with truth. It might indicate a particular set of beliefs, but people have been and continue to be mistaken in their beliefs. See James Randi's website [randi.org] for numerous examples. If you don't like those, there's always Google.
Re:Protected blog, full text of post (Score:5, Insightful)
The myth would be "if it follows standards, then it will work."
His argument could be improved, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
His argument could be improved, but he is correct. W3C should be the fallback default for websites, not some IE variant. Too many websites default to IE if they don't recognize the browser id string, and that frells even W3C compliant browsers.
The other thing the bozo in transit forgets is that Opera is one of the most popular microbrowsers built into cell phones, PDAs, and other portable devices -- the very customer base that is most likely to need mobile access to information about the transit system.
The whole series of "browser wars" arguments are bull IMNSHO. W3C HTML first, W3C approved standards next (e.g. XHTML, XML documents), vendor-specific variants LAST. If developers would stop working around that godawful mess, Microsoft would be forced to fix IE by a deluge of customer complaints. Our own policy of appeasement in search of market share is what forces the entire web community to keep working around the incompatible platform-specific enhancements, costing the entire planet money.
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Most of the time, it's because the "creators" of the page only tested in in MSIE, and the page therefore renders well in MSIE because the designers only happen to use broken code that somehow renders well in MSIE.
It's not that MSIE is good at rendering broken html (it's not really), it's that people are creating broken HTML that renders well in the mess of misbehaviour, bugs and other hellspawns that live in the MSIE code.
On the other hand, it's dead easy to create perfectly good HTML/CSS that render perf
A painful subject (Score:5, Interesting)
Not Opera (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry for the serious comment in an "It's funny. Laugh." story
Re:Not Opera (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, that's still no justification or reason for saying "don't use Opera,"
Really? 0.6% marketshare? Can I complain because it doesn't render properly in Lynx [browser.org]?
Take my comment as flamebait if you want to. But I have much bigger things to complain about on the web. Like webpages that won't work without Javascript. Or webpages that use stupid flash interfaces. Or how about webpages that aren't dialup friendly? I suspect there's more dialup users out there then Opera users. Don't see anybody on /. jumping up to defend them.
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If the website is coded properly (i.e. XHTML+CSS, structured c
Re:Not Opera (Score:5, Interesting)
No, but it would be pretty cool if somebody would mashup Google Maps with an ASCII converter.
Re:Not Opera (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not Opera (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why people keep saying this is a market share issue. There are published, freely available standards that describe the languages used for creating web sites, and the way browsers should interpret these languages. Now, if a page doesn't work in a browser, there are two possibilities:
1. The website is doing something wrong
2. The browser is doing something wrong
In the first case, the website is broken, and people should complain to the webmaster, regardless of the market share of their browsers. In the second case, the browser is broken, and people should complain to the browser vendor, no matter the market share of their browsers.
``Can I complain because it doesn't render properly in Lynx?''
Yes, as long as you use the right definition of properly. Most importantly, rendering a page "properly" does not have anything to do with rendering it the same way another browser does. HTML and CSS were designed to be forward compatible: browsers are supposed to treat elements they don't understand in a specific way, which ensures that the elements are, at least, made available to users. JavaScript doesn't work that way, but, in the forward compatibility philosophy, scripts on pages should themselves be something that can be ignored, without rendering the page useless. Together, all these mean that Lynx, or any other browser, should at least render the basic elements like paragraphs, headings, and links in some way useful to the user. This could be anything from full support for a custom scripting language and lots of multimedia content embedded in the page, full support for the latest versions of CSS and HTML, etc. to speaking out the text on the page with some indication of which parts are links and how to activate them. As far as I can tell, Lynx does a good job at this, except when web pages are made in such a way as to not be compatible with all but a few chosen browsers.
You can argue market share all you want, but, in the end, it's not usually about the users of one specific browser being discriminated against, but about blatantly shutting out _all_ browsers, except a chosen few. That's ok; after all, if it's your own webpage, you can decide what you put on it and who can view it and what software they need, etc. (at least, as far as my sense of morals is concerned; US law disagrees) However, everybody who doesn't like that has the right to complain about it. And I will say the complaints have merit. Not that you have to care about the complaints, or about my opinion, of course. Still, you could make your page in such a way that it works in all (compliant) browsers; it's not hard. In fact, it's what you get if you don't do anything against it.
Re:Not Opera (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not Opera (Score:4, Informative)
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Fixed.
No, not fixed - completely rephrased to mean something similar that you like better.
He had it right in the first place - That phrase uses a highly technical linguisitic device known as "sarcasm", wherein the speaker says exactly the opposite of what they mean. (The clever bunny might notice I used the same device for illustration at the start of that sentence, as one wouln't normal
Firefox (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, Firefox can be plugged up to do everything Opera does (password fill, voice browsing, mouse gestures, tab thumbnails, comprehensive download management, RSS/etc feeds, two-click privacy management/delete data, on-the-fly presentation modes (change styles, backgrounds, tables, links, images from toolbar in User/Author mode), image gallery jumpthrough, keyboard zoom, and all the rest.
However, Opera provides a standard setup out of the box, on any computer. I can download it and be up and running in seconds, without spending time configuring plugins, and no annoying autoinstalls. It will also look and behave the same on your XP laptop as on my *NIX box, as on your 98 workstation.
And unlike Firefox, Opera will not be using 2GB of swap if you leave it running overnight with Gmail open!
With that in mind, Opera is at the level, or better than Firefox, meaning that it is way better than Internet. Not supporting it is just idiocy.
Re:Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Firefox can be plugged up to do everything Opera does
Whenever the subject of Opera's functionality comes up:
"Install 20 extensions to make Firefox mimic the functionality."
Whenever the subject of Firefox instability comes up:
"Firefox doesn't crash for me. It's probably those 20 extensions you have installed."
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My problem with Opera has never been about the compliance. I used Mozilla from the beginning, ran Konqueror frequently, and toyed around with Safari on the mac when it was in its infancy. Sites that "don't work" don't seem to irk me as much as other people.
Opera is fast. Noticably faster I'd argue, than anything else I've used on Windows or Linux (not much experience with the Mac end of things).
But I don't use Opera. It feels bloated. Sure
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The 3/3 Rule (Score:2, Interesting)
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Probably a sensible rule. But I think it's better to turn it around and say this: If a new feature you want to develop for your site will require a recent version of a "major" browser, it might be a good idea to reconsider whether you actually need that feature. Or maybe you could spend just a bit of time investigating whet
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Whew! It's a good thing then that Apple is just about to pierce 3% of the desktop market share! [techspot.com] Of course you should be careful making claims like that around here since Linux desktops are around only 3% as well, though a quick search didn't turn up any recent numbers.
I find it humorous when people (and certain stupid stereotyping commercials) talk about
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It's all risk management. If you don't feel you're likely to get a return on your investment, don't do it.
His point was that you should rethink whether or not you really need to spend time and money on something which may not give any return. That rethink could ultimately have the conclusion that it is worth spending the money despite the smaller potential return.
Think of it this way: you have 1 hour (and only one hour) to put up a website for your business. Do you o
So let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Guy A can't load it and assumes he's being blocked because he's using an oddball browser
3) Guy A complains and is told by Guy B to stop using his oddball browser and get over it
4) Guy A goes ballistic on his blog
5) Guys C, D and E respond to Guy A's blog and say "we're using opera and it works fine for us, must be something on your end"
6) Because it's blog drama, one man's fucked-up configuration problems ends up on slashdot
Do I have that right?
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But in general its a similar problem with all blogs. A company I know Is upset because of a similar situation. Some idiot who doesn't know what he's talking abo
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:5, Funny)
That's a pretty good idea, actually. I mean, we're never going to get something like actual human editors who could actually inspect the articles before they were posted, so some sort of automated solution to cull out the obvious crap would be a good first step.
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> You'd think there would be some kind of a filter to prevent stuff like this from happening.
That's a pretty good idea, actually. I mean, we're never going to get something like actual human editors who could actually inspect the articles before they were posted, so some sort of automated solution to cull out the obvious crap would be a good first step.
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You forgot.
7) Profit!!!
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6.5) ?????
You can't profit without the unknown!!1!11!!1111!!11!!
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Constructive suggestions (Score:2)
Uh, hi there. (Score:5, Informative)
My original complaint was written as I was viewing the revamped website, and just couldn't believe the nav problem I had seen. Nearly half a million dollars went into the redesign and it seemed like they'd really goofed. The second complaint was written when Mac Daniel threw a little jab in his writeup on the debacle, while I was sussing out the nav problem with Ron Newman. Is it a coding thing? Is it an OS thing? Is it a configuration thing? Is it an enduser thing? I dunno. Then the MBTA reverted to the previous version so I couldn't play around with it any further. And then my knee-jerk reaction to Mac's knee-jerk reaction just led to more knee-jerk reactions. Okay, I gotta stop typing 'knee-jerk' because it's beginning to look weird.
I stand by my opinion that if a browser is in current development and it's W3C compliant, then it should by all rights be considered a supportable browser and a browser to be supported. That's all. If I had been crying that the MBTA site wasn't viewable on Netscape Navigator 4.0, say, then I could see why there'd be a problem and why the advice to change browsers would come pouring in.
All I wanted was to be able to use the website with a current, up-to-date, standards-compliant web browser. I also said I'd be happy to use another supported browser to view it, but it would be nice if I didn't have to, and it'd be much nicer if I weren't told to.
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There are other annoyances. For example, Safari's javascript implementation sucks. Simply put, there aren't any standard compliant browsers. Just browsers that get damn close. So its
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He's just dumb (Score:2)
Our suggestion? Stop using Opera. Note in the comments section that other Opera users aren't experiencing the same problems.
Their suggestion is a poor attempt at implying the obvious. If other Opera users aren't experiencing the same problem; then maybe you're just too stupid to configure your browser properly, and should use one that comes set up for you. Of course saying that outright is a PR nightmare so they just said switch browsers.
If you want it to work in your browser (Score:2, Informative)
Write standards-conform HTML! (Score:3, Insightful)
Side note: The 0.6% figure is highly doubtful. Because of broken websites that work fine in Opera, but that refuse to load if they detect anything other than IE or FireFix, many Opera users set their Browser to pretend to be IE. Broken statistics tools cannot see through this.
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That being said, Opera just happens to be amazing to develop web sites in because of its incredible level of compliance, so my sites happen to work in Opera, simply because they are developed in Opera FIRST, then fixed to work in other browsers.
But thats only because the move makes sense from a business point of view. Not to please some minority.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
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I saved up my paper route money to earn that Harry Potter broom and I'm damn proud of it.
Call your self a browser? Support standards. (Score:2, Informative)
A properly marked up web page should work in every standards compliant browser, who cares if the browsers interpretation of the 'box model' or whatever is different, it s
Re:Call your self a browser? Support standards. (Score:5, Informative)
Result: Failed validation, 40 errors (This is just the home page, not the whole site.)
Address: www.mbta.com
Encoding: utf-8 (assumed, there is no encoding specification in the header)
Doctype: (no Doctype found) -- the 40 errors assumes HTML4.01 Transitional. My guess is if there is no Doctype line in the header, the Web site designers probably have no clue that there ARE standards for HTML documents.
It's true that not every site needs to be standards compliant. Google's home page doesn't validate either. But Google's HTML actually works in a diverse collection of browsers.
My opinion FWIW -- If the site doesn't validate, the first step is to fix the site. If the site still doesn't render then, and only then, does it become reasonable to question whether the browser might be a problem.
standards compliant? (Score:4, Insightful)
The user should simply send a bug report to both the browser and the site developer. Both developers should then determine whether the problem is with standards compliance of the browser or of the site, and whatever is broken should get fixed. "Don't use Opera" and "every site must work with Opera" are both unreasonable principles.
med school apps suck (Score:3, Informative)
says
Unsupported Browser
AMCAS supports only the following web browsers for Windows:
* Internet Explorer 5.5
* Internet Explorer 6 Get it here
* Netscape 7 Get it here
* Firefox 1.0.2
* Firefox 1.5 Get it here
If you try to use anything else, even firefox 2.0, it won't let you in
The issue isn't (primarily) about the code (Score:3, Insightful)
Can we not lose sight of the issue? (Insert obligatory slashdot culture joke here).
Whether or not the site is busted or Opera is busted, while obviously quite relevant, is secondary. What's sticking in this guy's craw is that this Mac Daniel troll didn't even have a clue where the problem was, he just went into his go-get-a-real-browser routine right out of the box.
Believe me, "It's your browser's fault, not ours" is a perfectly valid answer once you can back it up.
Someone points out that just because you code to standard doesn't mean it'll work in all browsers. True. But that's why you code to standards. So when this happens, you take a frigging second to trace down the problem, and if it's because Opera isn't executing the standard properly, you can assert that with confidence and tell them to take it up with the browser dev team.
If everytime someone breaks a standard we just stop coding to it all together, we may as well get rid of standards, becuase someone is always going to break them. At least until we nuke Redmond from space.
But again, I doubt that's even the primary issue here, because I seriously doubt by his tone that Mac Daniels even thought about this. He simply heard Opera and reacted like your standard forum jackhole, and this guy smacked that garbage off the playground. Good for him.
Opera shmopera (Score:3, Insightful)
"improve performance", they really did need to improve it. I happened to hit the
site yesterday for directions and it was dog slow for no improvement in usability
(just aesthetics). Worse, they were using an invalid Google Maps API key from the
test server in production.
Re:Weird response. Weird summary too. (Score:4, Funny)
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Have you ever worked in the north-east? This is a pissed off person behaving in a very diplomatic manner.
Re:I gotta agree (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong on both counts. I'd go into detail, but a cure for your ignorance is only 4.7 megabytes away.
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Re:I gotta agree (Score:5, Informative)
You are an idiot. Opera has been ad free for a LONG time and it does not install any adware. Opera 9 is also faster than Firefox 2, it kicks Firefox's ass quite handily:
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html [howtocreate.co.uk]
Why should a browser that is still being actively developed and used be deprecated? Please try to post something relevent next time.
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As for the +2 that is because I have excellent karma and bonused at +2 originally and then got modded +1 informative before the -1 flamebait mod.
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Re:Get a life (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, you didn't RTFA either: it's not actually Opera, it's just his computer. (See my earlier comment.)
Re:Get a life (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an Opera fanboy, but I don't think this is always a problem of coding specifically for IE. Opera works quite well on 98% of the sites I visit. Occassionally I bump into one that doesn't work in Opera, but works just fine in Firefox. Maybe Opera does 'support all the standards' and FF has a few IE-like nicities, as opposed to failing to implement an obscure feature that some sites use. I cannot really say I know. I do know that Google Maps works better in FF than Opera. Don't get me wrong, it's quite usable and useful in Opera, but in FF it's a little more interactive with the mouse. I don't think this is due to a lack of effort on Google's part to support Opera.
It's easy to make sites that work with both FF and Opera, but there are niggling issues here and there that still bring up a bit of trouble. I love Opera, but I cannot personally say it's as good at reaching all the sites on the web as FF is. It would be fair for me to say, though, that this is a problem I so rarely come across anymore that I agree with you that this is silliness on the side of the web developer. Getting their site to work with Opera would probably just require a couple of little tweaks. That is, of course, assuming that Opera 9 didn't already solve the problem. (I haven't exhaustively tested this yet, but a couple of sites I had trouble with in O8 worked beautifully in 9.)
I agree with the GP poster that it should make economic sense for them before they support Opera. I agree with you that better coding standards on their site would alleviate this problem with the added benefit of supporting other browsers like Safari. There's a happy medium in there somewhere. Honestly, I think the "have Opera and FF both installed" solution is that happy medium. That's what keeps me from sending nasty-grams twice a year when I hit a site Opera can't open.
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I use Mozilla.
As far as I'm concerned, with stories like this one, the real issue for me is: in five years time, am I going to be effectively forced to switch back to that POS browser IE, just because of idiot content providers like the Boston Globe who are turning the web into a Windows/IE-only playground, built on top of a foundation of Microsoft's browser bugs?
Now I have to be honest. Whether Opera users are
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It was not Internet Explorer. It was Firefox. (read the article) [boston.com]
So should we go go through your post and replace every instance of 'IE' with Firefox?
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Go ahead. I can say most of the same stuff about FF. My point was people shouldn't be forced to use specific browser implementations, and they're going to get forced to anyway because it's cheaper for companies to code to implementations and not to standards.
What does this have to do with Free Software? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are you bringing "the free software community" into this? Opera isn't free software*, and XP isn't free software, so what does this have to do with the free software community?!
(* Opera is free to download, but it is not Free Software in the sense of the phrase "free software community").
No... (Score:5, Insightful)
From a business point of view it is real simple do you want someone to not buy your product?
For Firefox that runs about 10% If you can support them you should.
finally this is a PUBLIC site run by as in run by the government! The government shouldn't require one to use a certain browser without a really good reason.
Unless you are doing a lot of Ajax it isn't hard to support Opera.
The only reason is because you are lazy.
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The government should use it's resources as efficiently as possible. For example the government doesn't support 220 V / 50 Hz AC power in the public power grids. It would truly be a waste of money to support every possible "browser" that a citizen comes up with. If there is an available option that isn't unduly burdensome then it is completely acceptabl
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So many people assume that whenever there is a problem like this, it is just the Microsoft Borg machine pushing their own lack-of-standards on the rest of the world.
Nope- it's just that these developers happened to create something that didn't work with this guys browser/computer combination.
Someday people will figure out that Internet Explorer is not to blame for IE only sites. It is the developers that are to blame.
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Wrong. You code your site to work in all of the major browsers. I've successfully done it on a few small sites. It's not that hard. "It's like that because it works in browser X" is not an excuse. Find a way to make it work in all of them, and be standards-compliant. A webmaster who doesn't is incompetent, and needs to be replaced with someone who can get it done.
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It's still cost vs. reward, even if it's the government and not a private business.
I'd be pretty pissed if I found my tax money was going on projects that had ballooned in cost and massively shrunk in features to support a fraction of a percent of the population that had other valid alternatives but were simply too bloody minded to move from something t
Re:No... (Score:5, Informative)
I'll start with the disclaimer first: I work at Opera Software, with Web applications. Then I'll continue with an honest-to-god question, as I have more of an interest in understanding why people's sentiments are as they are:
Where does the misconception that Opera can't do "a lot of Ajax" come from? Because it clearly can, for instance, see Aida, the Ajax phone [opera.com] -- a rather massive Ajax framework and appplication running on top of Opera Platform (a runtime which provides access to certain aspects of the device, such as battery status, connectivity, message stores and such).
Re:Get a life (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't about Free Software, this is about Web Standards and freedom of choice.
As a developer, I can tell you that I don't have to go out of my way to support modern browsers. I have to go very far out of my way to support Internet Explorer which can't be considerd a modern browser (even IE7), whose standards support is abysmal compared to everything else on the market today. This is a side effect of my knowing how to do my job well.
Once again, an innocent suffers in the name of one of MS' shitty products.
Making a business decision is one thing, but telling your customers to fuck off because your business decision doesn't jive with their personal choices is downright rude.
As for games, it is a more similar issue than you probably realize, because the same people are meddling with the market. If game studios would stop developing against DirectX and start using OpenGL instead, it would be much easier for them to support platforms other than Windows.
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Gee you don't ask much. Just that game developers abandon their existing code base and totally retrain their programmers, just to sell a few games to people who represent a tiny portion of the market. Don't hold your breath until that happens!
Even if you develop against platform-agnostic APIs, it still costs a lot of money to support users running
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You mean like they are doing with DX10 and vista?
Not so much as you may think. How large a percent of the windows market will buy a given game, seeing as there are so many windows games? Now think tha
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Gee you don't ask much. Just that game developers abandon their existing code base and totally retrain their programmers, just to sell a few games to people who represent a tiny portion of the market
This is circular logic. The only reason that other platforms are seen as representing a tiny portion of the market - is because games aren't released on those platforms. If they did release for those platforms, they might find that they were a much bigger percentage than they thought. Some developers are smart enough to realize this, and have great success porting games to Mac and Linux. They get good sales, because there isn't as much competition from the millions of other Windows games.
The "business" is obligated to serve the public (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't just any business. It is a government-subsidized organization set up to serve the public interest. They have an obligation to serve all people, not just the majority. If they decided to not allow wheelchairs on their vehicles because only 0.001% of the population uses them, the leaders of that organization would be testifying in front of congress within days.
If the site doesn't work with Opera there is a 99% chance it doesn't work with tools for the visually impaired either. Frankly, any government site should be required to use open, published standards.
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I work on a lot of websites of the State of California. We do try to ensure 508 compliance (because, well, we have to). But I frequently wonder about how many people we are losing because of the language of the websites?
We have more people who primarily speak Spanish, Hmong, Vietnamese, Russian, Cantonese (etc. etc.) than who are blind- the group most often associated with 508 compliance.
So what about these other people? D
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First, this really has nothing to do with Linux, GNU, FSS, etc. Opera, as far as I know, is closed source commercial software. It is a standards based, highly efficient, flexible brows
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Second, and most importantly: it is about STANDARDS support, and not using non-standard features. If every site has to be redone for EACH browser, then you either have to multiply your work or you stop supporting more than a couple browsers. Nobody wants that (well maybe MS does, but I'm talking about consumers here). Sites should be based on standards. If a site is standard-compliant, and a browser doesn't render it, the it is the brows
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Precisely. I've chosen an OS and browser which Adobe/Macromedia deliberately refuse to support. But I'm not sending histrionic rants to YouTube because I can't see any of their crappy videos.
If websites don't want me to visit them, I won't visit them. Simple. And I have lower blood pressure as a result.
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This isn't a random website, it's the public transport site of a city. I don't know how corporatised it is, but in any case they have a greater duty to be accessible to the citizens of the city than your average commercial enterprise.
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2006 isn't 1996. People don't surf the web with just PCs any more. People use everything from game consoles to cel phones to browse the web, and issues are going to pop up if you don't keep your site simple.
The problem, in my experience, is always rooted in one or both of the following:
1 - The decision maker at the client wants all the dancing baloney he/she can get. Flash, DHTML, what-have-you. It's gotta be b
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If you disagree then make your point and back it up with facts (if you can). Then accept the final decision and do your absolute best to implement it. That's called being a professional.
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You clearly know nothing about this subject, nor does anyone that modded you up. They only have to support two standards, the real one, and enough to get IE working. There are no others.
On the other hand, if your browser isn't worth supporting from a dollars and cents point of view that is your problem, not theirs.
Th
Re:another great site for opera (slightly OT) (Score:5, Interesting)
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Because: "Under Section 508 (29 U.S.C. 794d), agencies must give disabled employees and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to others."
If the information isn't accessible in Opera it sure as hell isn't in any disabled person's browser.
See http://www.section508.gov/ [section508.gov] before your ignorance spreads.