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

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.