Scratch IE and use Mozilla or FireFox to make that second sentence true.
No, I went out of my way to do things right because I’m a professional.
Being a “Mac guy” is just one of the benefits of “doing things right.” 
You saying this in this thread is one of the funniest and saddest things I’ve seen on this board in over five years.
Quite aside from the arrogance involved in Bill H.'s attitude, it’s also a huge commercial gamble. Sure, IE is still massively dominant…but anybody dealing with commericial websites should be looking for early indicators of a major change. Such as:
http://news.com.com/Firefox+drawing+fans+away+from+Microsoft+IE/2100-1032_3-5368302.html
Devoting yourself to IE-specific design means that you’re targeting a shrinking market.
In other words, you’re one of the clueless fucks being pitted and too stupid to actually know how to do your job right.
Aside from HTML coding issues, my big gripe with many company Web sites is that they are so f’n useless. They present a nice, colorful ad for the company, but are utterly devoid of anything I actually need to know – like a phone number. Hello?
I’m an IT manager for a large state government department, potentially a large customer. I’m not buying one or two items from your web page with a credit card, I’m buying in bulk, and that means I need to talk to a sales rep (probably an area manager) in person. I can’t count the number of companies out there who do not post a phone number – I don’t care if it isn’t an 800 number, my phone budget covers toll calls – but POST A FREAK’IN NUMBER ALREADY!!!
The one that really annoys me is when there is a link entitled “Contact Us”, and, instead of a company directory, up pops a window where you can send them an email. Not helpful.
Here’s a hint. Don’t let the Web designers loose on your Web site without someone who actually deals with your cutomers in the loop.
Then you didn’t do your job properly. Had you done your job properly, ‘Mac support’ wouldn’t have been an issue because if you, get this, write actual standard code for websites, it’ll be platform independent. Believe it or not Mr. I’ve Been On RFC Boards, the web standards do not revolve around Internet Explorer.
It most certainly does not revolve around Internet Explorer, which is how you seem to think it works.
Someone who thinks that non-proprietary, industry wide standards revolve around IE has pushed for features that were ‘declined’? No shit? I can’t say I’m surprised here. I’ve been quite up close and personal with RFCs, and anybody who writes them to conform to one specific proprietary piece of software is a fucking moron, even more so than the people who merely design a website for one browser and then bitch about ‘Mac support.’
He obviously went out of his way to design a website that does what websites were intended to do: be independent of the end user’s platform. Same thing I do in all of my contracts.
You and me both. And you know how much ‘extra’ work it takes to do the job right too, I’ll bet.
And this is the source of much negotiation with my clients when I do web design. They seem to focus on glitz and Flash and horrible shit, while I’m trying to determine what kind of actual content they want. One of the best clients I ever worked with was one who knew nothing at all about websites, didn’t have one at that point, and piled me with information then gave me carte blanche to create the site I thought would be ‘best’ for them. They provided a few features they absolutely wanted and let me create the rest. They and their customers have been very happy with the site.
I usually do include an email link on the ‘Contact Us’ page, but I also list mailing address for snail mail, and phone numbers of important contact people on that page. The ‘Contact Us’ link that pops up an email box is particularly heinous, in my opinion, and is often made worse by the fact that some designers will hide the email address on mouseover. Another thing that I really, really like is for a site to have a ‘Site Map’ page, especially if there are many convoluted menus to follow through. Just makes life easier, and since I do a layout and planning before I start to code, that’s usually something that’s all done but the code pretty early on.
I like that too. Often it’s much quicker to use than menus. Hell, the BBC manage to have a full A-Z directory.
I feel everybody’s pain. I’m a web designer forced to design around an IE-only website engine. Its all Perl and CGI and according to the designer, its “too much work” to convert it to code that will work properly with my Firefox browser.
“Too much work”, my ass. You’ll be first against the wall when the revolution comes, homey.
Plus, it makes me look like a know-nothing chump because my clients come to me with all sorts of internet related problems, so I recommend Firefox…but not for their sites, because they’ll only work in IE.
That’s all it is, is laziness. Code in a browser-independent language. Just because you thought you were safe when you wrote this code in '99 doesn’t mean you’ll never have to, oh, catch up with the times, lets say. If you don’t code for all browsers, then you’re breaking a cardinal rule of web design and there’s no excuse for you.
Also, my $0.02 on company websites that don’t provide any real contact information: you’re all fuckers. AT&T Wireless purposely didn’t list any contact phone # besides their god-awful customer service line…very long story short, I had to Google for 1/2 an hour to find their corporate headquarters phone number. Of course, once I found it and called them, they were miraculously able to fix my problem…probably because they figured anyone dedicated and angry enough to hunt down their well-hidden corporate phone number was unstable enough to do then serious harm if they didn’t appease her.
Heh. I had DSL through Verizon a little while back, and needed to contact them to discontinue service. I didn’t have a copy of any of my bills (I know, I know), but I figured I should be able to figure out how to do it online, yes? No! You got NO billing/contact info from them at all unless you logged into their system, and you could only register with their system if you had a copy of your most recent statement with some code or other on it. I couldn’t believe it. IF I HAD MY BILL I WOULD BE ON THE PHONE TO YOU, YOU MORONS!
I might not be remembering the details all exactly right, but basically it was a horrible catch 22 where I needed info from them, and the only way they would let me talk to them was by providing the info I needed to get. Gah.
How about the “Contact Us” links that only let you send an email to the webmaster? How these companies stay in business is beyond me.
As for online bill paying, I still can’t pay my fucking Comcast bill online, but they sure want to expand my phone service to include DSL. :rolleyes:
catsix wrote
There’s no love-fest like a Mac love-fest. “You’re the professional!” “No, you are the professional!” “No, no! You are the professional!”
Meanwhile, the professionals are off building things that satisfy the majority of their customers. And the “professionals” are off whining on a message board that their computers don’t interoperate.
Dan Norder wrote
catsix wrote
It’s bad enough I have to deprioritize work to support your Operating System. You don’t have to make me enjoy it.
Satisfy a decreasing number of their customers. You haven’t responded to that yet.
You want to buy an old Performa 500 series? It’s only 10 years old, things haven’t changed too much in 10 years, right?
Translation: These so-called “professionals” didn’t suggest a 100% standards-compliant solution to their client, one that would satisfy all of their customers.
Just out of curiousity, Bill H., but which clients have you applied your oh-so-wonderful techniques to? I’d like to give them a call and get some extra business. “Hey, you know that web site of yours? Do you know you’re losing 15,000 visitors a day because it’s not standards compliant?”
I don’t use a Mac, fucktard. I don’t even own one.
Yeah, they’re off trying to satisfy a rapidly decreasing number of users when they could instead do their jobs properly and not write shitty, platform dependent sites.
My computers interoperate beautifully. I have Windows boxes and Unix boxes, and they talk to each other with no problem. When I design websites, I do so with the knowledge that those who visit them will use IE and Opera and Safari and Netscape and Mozilla and any other browser, and I write standard code that is platform independent.
You gotta wonder what kind of ‘professional’ thinks that you can satisfy either the Mac users or the IE users, but not both. Shit, standard code does exist for a reason.
Me neither. I used one, once. In 1995.
If website designers would just use HTML, and not bother with the damn Javascript or Flash except where necessary (and don’t even get me started on frames), then there wouldn’t be a problem. To reiterate and paraphrase what others have said: do it right the first time and you won’t have to go back and add support for other browsers/OS’es.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for using advanced features like script and CGI where they do some good (couldn’t have a message board without 'em) but damned if a day goes by where I don’t visit a site that has piles of unnecessary Javascript buried in the page source. Sometimes this script causes a problem. Remember: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
It’s the same with programming - developers will spend 6 months or a year writing up their design on a whiteboard (because this is what they teach us to do in programming class) only to result in a buggy/insecure/incompatible/slow/etc piece of crap that throws an exception and dies if you look at it funny.
Last time I updated my web site I tested under the following browers:
Netscape 4 for Windows (tested under NT)
Internet Explorer (umm, the one that gets installed with XP)
Opera 6 for Windows
Internet Explorer 2.x for Windows (tested under NT)
Netscape 4 for Linux
Internet Explorer 5 for Mac (tested under MacOS 9)
Mozilla 1.2.1 for MacOS9
FireFox for Windows (I think it’s 0.8 or 0.9)
FireFox for MacOS X (likewise)
OmniWeb 5 for MacOS X
iCab 2.9.8 for 68K Mac (tested under Basilisk II / System 7.5.5)
iCab 2.9.8 for MacOS X
Camino 0.7.0 for MacOS X
Netscape 7.1 for MacOS X
Mozilla 1.3/5.0 for X11 (tested under OS X X11)
Lynx 2.8.3 (tested under OS X terminal)
Netscape 3.0 for MacOS (tested under MacOS 8.6)
Mosaic 2.0 (tested under MacOS 8.6)
Shiira 0.9.2.2 for MacOS X
I readily admit I didn’t test enough under Linux environment, didn’t test at all for browser behavior under BSD and Solaris, and didn’t test enough Windows browsers, definitely didn’t test enough browsers under XP or older Windows (e.g. 98). But I figured areas of incompatibility would show up after awhile and when they did I created messages and auto-forwards to alternative pages. I only abandoned the very oldest and least compatible of browsers (really just Mosaic, come to think of it). I have a “guestbook” page that uses iFrames but for non-iFrame-compliant browsers will supply a page with upper and lower frame instead. I’m not happy about using Frames or iFrames but they fit a need and extensive testing indicated I could get away with it (with the alternatives described above).
And my site isn’t even commercial. If I were running a commercial site I’d greet everhyone NOT running Internet Explorer and/or NOT running Windows with a little greeting “Welcome! I see you’re using <browser> under <OS>! This web site has been extensively tested to make sure you don’t get a second-rate browsing experience here. If you should find otherwise, please email the webmaster at webgeek@domain.com and we’ll address any compatibility issues as quickly as possible”. And my test-list would be three times as long and cover every browser I could get my hands on.
And yes, my site works in Lynx. 