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?"

Comments

use written evidence

[ghee22]

CERT says to use a different web browser
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

simple...

[polyp2000]

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.

You might want to consider accessibility.

[Artega VH]

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.

Re:Americans with Disabilities Act

[c]

I really like that Act, not because I'm disabled, but because it forces MORON web designers to actually write web pages to be media-neutral

Amen to that. The Canadian government has a set of web guidelines which, among other things, say:

• meet W3C Accessibility guidelines level 1 and 2
  
• W3C formats are primary. Sure, go ahead and post that Word document, but the primary format has to be an accessible HTML doc.
  
• if you do anything with JavaScript, there's gotta be a non-JavaScript implementation too. None of that onClick instead of href crap.
  

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.

Re:Americans with Disabilities Act

[Bogtha]

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.

Tell them about future maintenance costs

[hadaso]

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?