From owner-freebsd-chat Sun Dec 16 9: 1:53 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from freebie.atkielski.com (ASt-Lambert-101-2-1-14.abo.wanadoo.fr [193.251.59.14]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A7DD037B41A for ; Sun, 16 Dec 2001 09:01:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from contactdish ([10.0.0.10]) by freebie.atkielski.com (8.11.3/8.11.3) with SMTP id fBGGwnR12822; Sun, 16 Dec 2001 17:58:50 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from anthony@freebie.atkielski.com) Message-ID: <007601c18652$f4d62640$0a00000a@atkielski.com> From: "Anthony Atkielski" To: "Terry Lambert" Cc: "Brandon D. Valentine" , "David Greenman" , "Greg Lehey" , "FreeBSD Chat" References: <20011216044542.Y86103-100000@turtle.looksharp.net> <004401c18635$2bd802d0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <3C1CAAEC.636A8975@mindspring.com> <005b01c1863f$3fa9aa70$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <3C1CC27C.FAF0A04F@mindspring.com> Subject: Re: Why no Indians and Arabs? Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 17:58:49 +0100 Organization: Anthony's Home Page (development site) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Terry writes: > You create controversy on mailing lists > for OS's whose default browsers are going > to be unable to render your pages in order > to get hits. I have no need to try to get hits for my site; it is getting plenty of visitors as it is, and it only costs me money. Additionally, trying to drum up hits by posting to obscure OS mailing lists would be exceedingly bizarre and counterproductive, as there are much better venues for trying to promote a Web site. BTW, you haven't answered my question: Which "IE specific tags" am I using? The pages validate as correct, standard HTML, which would necessarily exclude any IE-specific code. > Yet, you post things designed to drive controversy ... I compel people to defend unsubstantiated opinions. People who cannot substantiate their opinions tend to think of that as "driving controversy" or "being difficult" or think of it in any one of a dozen other negative ways, but that is just rationalization. > ... and therefore (either as an intended effect, > or a side effect) drive traffic to your web site. If my posts here (or anywhere) have generated traffic to my site, I haven't seen it. The overwhelming majority of visitors to my site arrive via search engines; visitors who enter the site directly (by typing the URL) are statistically insignificant. > And the lists on which you are posting are peopled > by people whose commercial release browser is > Netscape 4.x. That is their problem, not mine. Netscape has a newer browser that contains far fewer bugs (although it is still much worse than MSIE or Opera). > Also, pretty clearly: you are unlikely to get > repeat "vistors" from Netscape 4.x users, so that > will artificially deflate the number of such vistors > you record (self fulfilling prophecy). Most visitors are first-time visitors. On extremely rare occasions, someone still saddled with Netscape 4.x has asked why my pages display as a jumble on her screen, and I've suggested that she upgrade to Netscape 6.x (if she absolutely must stick with Netscape) or better still, to MSIE or possibly Opera. > I suggest adding Netscape 4.x, Lynx, and Konquerer > to your broswer test list. I dropped Netscape 4.x in 2000, because it is too difficult to accommodate its endless bugs, and I don't intend to change that policy. I already test with Lynx, as I've previously explained. Konquerer would require running an X server on my FreeBSD machine, which would require modifying the secure_level to a less secure setting and various other things that I really don't plan to bother with (the machine is a server, not a desktop). Less than 0.5% of visitors to my site are running any version of UNIX, so they don't matter. I use Lynx as my browser when I need to browse from the FreeBSD system. Nowadays, I try to get pages to render with a browser that implements the W3C standard. If there are browsers out there that cannot render standard, conformant HTML correctly, that's not my problem. MSIE is compliant, as is Opera, and even Netscape 6, to a large extent. Authors of other browsers need to fix them to make them compliant. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message