Forwarded message:
> From ckw Thu Sep 23 18:04:05 1999
> Subject: Re: Web Sites Designed for Browser X (was Re: search engines)
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 18:04:05 +0100 (BST)
> From: "C.K.Work" <[log in to unmask]>
> In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]> from "Brian Kelly" at Sep 23, 99 05:48:01 pm
> X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23]
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>
> Brian Kelly said ..
>
> > Within the web standards community there is a feeling emerging that many old browsers are broken and that web sites should be
> > developed based on current existing standards (HTML 4.0, CSS 2.0, ECMAScript, etc).
> >
> > So one could argue that it is legitimate (even desirable) to design a web site based on such standards. An informal way of
> > describing this could be "Designed for version 4 browsers". The danger with this terminology is that it could be used to describe a
> > web site which uses proprietary features supported by such browsers. However this does not have to be the case.
>
Maybe legitimate - I'm not sure about desirable! I'm not certain on the
best policy here. To a certain extent, saying old browsers are "broken"
is like saying my B&W telly is broken - OK, I won't see colour, but it
works fine within its limitations. Surely we should allow for lower
capabilities - esp. since upgrading to the latest browser may well mean
an individual having to upgrade their machine. But I'm not sure where
you draw the line - I won't write for Netscape 1/2, but I do expect ver.
3 and Lynx to work reasonably well with my pages.
PS The WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines say that you should use technologies such as CSS.
Yeah, fine - and of course all the latest browser support this in a
consistent fashion!
I suspect what is needed is a better understanding and advice on
multi-level authoring - ie. pages which fail gracefully - CSS CAN be of
use here, but it seems (to me anyway) non-trivial!
Regards,
Colin
_________________________________________________
Colin K. Work
Computing Services
University of Southampton
email [log in to unmask]
tel. 01703 593090 (direct line)
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