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How to Avoid IE-Specific WWW Development?
IE-less asks: "Can any Slashdot readers help me gather evidence to support the notion that developing an IE-specific WWW site is a bad thing? A state-level US-gov't organization we are contracted with (hence the anonymity) is about to embark on converting a Citrix-based application to a browser-based application, but in order to do so will make it IE Only. Our repeated screams of, 'No! Consider the standards!' have fallen on deaf ears. One of the few things we have found that helps is the Department of Homeland Security's recommendation that people switch browsers (look for 'Use another browser') care of the Get Firefox site. That's the sort of comment that makes people pay attention. The departments in question do not care about monopolies, non-Windows users, closed source expenses, etc. They will pay attention, though, to statements from powerful sources...such as the aforementioned. Anyone else find anything that works?"
German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), has told the Berliner Zeitung that internet users should switch from Internet Explorer to Mozilla or Opera. Dickopf says Internet Explorer is hazard-prone, attracting too many viruses and worms.
Finnish Gov't says "avoid use of Internet Explorer"
MS's IE blog says "we do not plan on releasing IE7 for Windows 2000" means no more security fixes for people without Windows XP or greater... which would lock out over 20% of the worlds population
man do i hate ie
"Persistence is annoying success." - ghee22 11:28:1999 - 10:53:PM
Cite W3C standards. Considering your client is a government one I would imagine that standards compliancy is of the uppermost importance. I work as a web developer in the UK and a couple of our clients are goverment bodies. They have in place the reqirement to adhere to standards such as W3C and bobby compliancy and accessibility such as screen readers etc. If we were to produce an IE only web application the chances are it would fail on all those points.
Personally I think that the cases as I have outlined above are paramount for your situation. You need to point out the reasons why what they are doing is not the best idea. If you are working for a government organisation it is your duty to think about everyone no matter what operating system or browser thet are using.
If your application is rendered useless to anyone (within reason) then you are doing the wrong thing. Regardless of what technologies you are using it would be wrong for a governmental institution to do this.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
While its possible that your state level government doesn't need to comply there are several laws and policies in the US that could possibly apply and at least would make people listen:
w3.org has the list at:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy/
Don't try to appear to be on a moral crusade against MS and IE. But hopefully once the lawyers sniff out that there could be potential hassles from building a website in a non-accessible/standards based manner the development process will be forced to change fairly quickly.
groklaw, wired and slashdot. The holy trinity of work based time wasting.
Amen to that. The Canadian government has a set of web guidelines which, among other things, say:
I couldn't even begin to count the number of times I've been able to shoot something down because of CLF compliancy issues.
c.
Log in or piss off.
Constructing an accessible website is not the same as making sure the website works with Lynx. Two of the most popular browsers used by blind surfers are IBM Homepage Reader and JAWS. Both of these are built on top of Internet Explorer.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Perhaps you should tell them about future maintenance costs: revising or rewriting everything with each new IE release (at least with IE7 that is supposed to "break things" by partially following standards). Then about the cost of making the system accessible, and rewirting it from time to time when regulations about "what is accessible" change. Then about possible legal costs because of not being accessible. Or because of having to provide alternative way to get the info to non-M$ customers (such as manually collecting and sending the info). Do they need to insure themselves against possible law suits relating to unavailability of the info they are supposed to serve? (at least unavailability to the few US citizens that are not customers of M$).
Is there a partnership between the US government and M$? Are US citizens required to also be M$ customers?
Three words: XML Data Islands.
For those not in the know, they're an IE-only way of appending data to the end of the HTML doc and the using DOM and javascript to use that data to fill in form fields in the document. If you remember typing in BASIC programs from magazines in the 80's, it's a lot like the BASIC READ...DATA statement combo, or you can think of it like a really slick hack for doing an XML stylesheet transformation without using XSLT. (In both cases, XML data + Form layout produce HTML, but data islands are like creating the form first and dropping the data in later instead of transforming the data to wrap the form formatting around it like an XSLT.)
Just by using XDIs, you can assure that only IE platforms can use your site. Sure you can do the same thing in other ways, but some programmers choose not to. Pick your own reasons why.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
But at least with the Air Force (my employer), that's the way it is, they have standardized on Microsoft, there is nothing anyone can do about it, so it doesn't make any sense to concern myself with browser nutral apps. We use IE. That's it. So, I develop apps based on using the non-standard MS technology, to do anything else would be silly.
I also get extremely annoyed at this. Especially since some sites are designed to be used from outside. There is not much you can say if an organization decides to develop an intranet site that is IE-only, since they can control the apps on the intranet. But a site that is esigned to be used by users from personal or non-USAF machines is another story.
The best thing I can do is advise you to read AFI 33-129. The best parts are:
I know that HTML 4.0 is getting old, but the instruction was originally drafted a couple of years ago. I have found that emailing webmasters of USAF sites with a link to the W3 validator output for their page(s) and copying in the text of 33-129 is enough to get their attention.
If they still choose to do nothing, report it to the parent organization's Inspector General. If still nothing, go higher. I rather like that it is at least stated in a regulation that all web site developers and maintainers are supposed to read and follow (though many don't). That at least gets you taken seriously and not though of as some sort of idiot just trying to cause trouble.