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Date:      Fri, 2 Nov 2001 10:48:58 +0000
From:      Paul Robinson <paul@akita.co.uk>
To:        Nils Holland <nils@tisys.org>
Cc:        David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com>, Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: NatWest? no thanks
Message-ID:  <20011102104858.A47349@jake.akitanet.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <20011102000921.J54141-100000@jodie.ncptiddische.net>; from nils@tisys.org on Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 12:40:25AM %2B0100
References:  <3BE1CC99.D3C8733C@acuson.com> <20011102000921.J54141-100000@jodie.ncptiddische.net>

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On Nov  1, Nils Holland <nils@tisys.org> wrote:

> It *should* have mass acceptance! If what I said previously sounded
> different, then it was definately not what I wanted to say. Sorry, it's
> very late here already ;-) I basically only wanted to say that we do not
> need to copy Microsoft or anyone else, but instead *get the word out*
> wbout what we have to offer.

That's my point - that sentiment is what needs to be discussed. Let me try
and bring this thread back screaming and kicking to being on-topic again,
and then let me explain where that little sub-thread went.

OK, what I was trying to say, is that perhaps it's not the bank's website
that is broken, but our software. Perhaps, just maybe, we should be trying
to adopt those standards, even try and make the rendering engines more
IE-like so that there is a legitimate reason to say they are being 'facist'
when they exclude us.

Where we then started swinging off-topic was as to whether we should just
sit here on our thrones and shout "we're all great, you're not, drop MS now
and come and join us or you're lame", or as to whether we should address all
the usability issues around our preferred platform to make the user
experience more accomodating for more people.

Nobody is talking about moving to an entirely point-and-click interface. OK,
you are, but nobody else is. I'm talking about making a situation where I
have a copy of Mozilla on my laptop that renders sites designed for IE just
like IE would. Where Shockwave and Javascript all behaves the way I would
expect it to in IE. Where IE-only tags get parsed and the output rendered
correctly. Your argument seems to be that we shouldn't do any of that, and
we should just tell people that 'our way' is better.

If an on-line stores choose to spend 50k on some Actinic-spawned bastard of
an e-commerce system, and they realise it will cost another 25k to get it to
work with browsers other than IE, like Mozilla and Konqueror, but only 10%
of the target market uses those browsers, should they spend the money? Do
they not have the right to say "this is the standard we've adopted"? - I
don't phone up my ISP and demand that they should let me use UUCP, because I
know the standard accepted by nearly everybody who uses mail is SMTP. Same
argument.

Anyway, I'm shutting up now, as it's quite obvious that everybody thinks I'm
wrong for even daring to suggest that MS might actually have a reasonably
good product in the form of their browser, and I'm obviously being a heretic
when I say that quite frankly, Mozilla and Konqueror don't match up.

I expect my inbox will get even more flames now. *sigh*.

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