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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?"
One argument I always give for my fellow developers is that standards compliance means your website will work for a lot longer if you adhere to the standards currently in place.. Who says MS is always going to support their IE-specific code? IE7 is supposedly going to have better standardization, which is going to take a lot of work on their part. Browsers have more reasons to adhere to standards that are in place, rather than their own specific little extras they came up with back in the day, which developers are pushing against..
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
Well, you could simply explain that client-side scripting has matured in modern browsers over the last five years or so, and therefore it's much easier to develop an application that works consistently with modern browsers. Point them to articles about AJAX (such as this one) and explain that it's becoming the rule, rather than the exception. You could point out that most modern web apps (such as almost everything Google develops) use the technologies mentioned above and work well with almost any modern, standards-compliant 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
"Persistence is annoying success." - ghee22 11:28:1999 - 10:53:PM
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, which was the entire goddamned point of the web to begin with.
I use Firefox, IE, Opera on my 640x480 Zaurus, lynx when I'm ssh'ing, and on occasion I even google via my cellphone. Sites like BBC really shine there. Even slashdot works out as long as you use the "light" rendering option.
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.
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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.
What about the application would make it IE specific? active X controls?, or using the Browser object as a control? needs a recent feature, that is implented differently?
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Is it simply a means to control costs? the testing and bug fixing time would be much greater if multiple platforms are supported, and for an internal application, where the client is under their control, I can't think of a good business reason not to use the browser that comes with the PC's. Do the PC's even have access to the internet to be vulnerable to attacks?
Firefox is not bug free, for example, if I mouse over to the scrollbar in the text edit box, the left edge of the thumb gets filled with random pixels, this happens on both Windows 98, XP and Linux/KDE for me. Randomly scrambled pixels is not a good sign. Also the more amusing case of the installer saying something like "click 'Next' to continue", when the button was labeled 'Proceed', I forget the exact words, but if the software isn't consistant in a single window, it dosn't install a sense of confidance.
Some applications just don't work within the standards; as far as I can tell, there is no mechanism in HTML, CSS or SVG to rotate characters in a font. Which is something I needed to do in a web application recently. (I ended up sending
I was asked the other day how computers store numbers, and ended up describing fixed vs. floating point, decimal, binary, hexidecimal, COBOL, bc, little endian, big endian, how to do basic math in binary, char/int, signed vs unsigned, wraparound, fibonucci...
Different solutions for different applications.
as the saying goes, "The nice thing about Standards is that there are so many to choose from."
The US Copyright Office asks whether we would have any problem if we were required to use Microsoft Internet Explorer in order to pre-register a work. I sent them an email explaining why this would be a bad thing. Please help me prevent an MSIE-only US Copyright Office website by sending them your views on this issue. Together with more information and links about this issue, you can find my letter on my blog and use it as a base for your letter. The government of Norway recently embraced open formats, it would be a pity to see US government sites to require MSIE!
So, if you're on Windows, and you're going to require IE, hence require Windows XP, why in the world would you write a web app?
Write a fat-client app. The Web plays weak second fiddle to a Rich Client UI, even on Windows.
The point of web apps are portability, so if you're doing to dash portability, don't write a web app.
I know, somebody will say, "so you don't have to install any software". Yeah, right, this is being deployed on an Active Directory network with client management and login scripts and full control over the clients.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The departments in question do not care about monopolies, non-Windows users, closed source expenses, etc.
Perhaps they should start caring about the expenses. It's our damn tax dollars they're blowing.
11*43+456^2
Look at existing logs from their website, or similar (friendly) websites. If they are building for a controlled audience (their employees), then they can do whatever works.
However, if the logs show access from non-IE browsers, then they have to justify why they are refusing to serve those people.
Good luck.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
Management doesn't need to know details about standards and compatibility and such. Just make it work on both browsers. I highly doubt that the business requirements for your project say "Req 43z: Make sure the product does not work on Mozilla, Opera, or Lynx." :-)
If your development team wants it to be cross-browser compatible, then just make it so. If your development team doesn't know about standards or doesn't care, then I might start looking for another job because the product is doomed anyway.
My experience is that development teams tend to use a mix of browsers, so unless they are total newbs they make it work with what they've got, in addition to what management wants. There's nothing insubordinate about that. It's good design and it is planning ahead. So don't fret, just make it work.
Go ahead and compile the list of impressive references that say why you shouldn't chain yourself to IE.
And throw in some references to companies or organization's that have successfully abandoned IE.
It would be nice to see if IBM or your favorite local contractor will give you a quote for software support of Firefox/Mozilla/Opera/etc (I'm sure they will), just so you can prove that support IS available. The cost doesn't matter, just the proof that support exists.
But be sure to wrap it all in an obsequious concern for the reader's well-being...
"Sir, there's some rumors of a nasty goomba-virus out there, and what with all these references about how bad IE is, well, I'm just concerned that the senior management might take it poorly if they found out that we had committed to use IE in the face of all this, if we should spend a lot of money recovering from it, like we did for that Code Red thing, or the XYZ worm, that is. I just wanted to make sure you had all the information so you could support your decision should any questions be raised down the road, sir..."
Self-preservation is the only currency one has with pointy-headed management...
Anyway, you start talking Opern Source or "evil Microsoft, blaw, blaw, blaw.." to the people that have the pwoer to make these decisions, maybe you get branded unreliable and lose your clearence...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
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?
It's all very well to say "do it without scripts", but in practice, as web applications get more complex using client side scripting gives developers the opportunity to make the user interface much more useful, more efficient and much more pleasant to use. Take gmail for example, without javascript it would be much, much, much less pleasant to use, constant back and forth to the server, google would be serving hundreds of times more bandwidth, everything would be much slower - but with scripting, well, you must have used gmail by now - it's responsive, efficient, fast and more or less pleasant to use. Same goes, perhaps even more so, for google maps - without scripting it would be no where near as pleasant to use.
Sure, you could come up with a script-less interface for most anything but if your application is anything more than the very basic stuff of yesteryear it's going to be vastly inferior in many ways to the client side script enabled system.
Of course that said, script should be used judiciously. Anybody who requires javascript for LINKS to work deserves a serious kicking.
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Hope that helps
-Jamal.
My last sig was ridiculed
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
http://www.access-board.gov/508.htm
Any mention of breaking the law and violating the rights of those with disabilities will get the attention of any decision maker. (Think lawsuits!!!)
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
All federal, state, and local government websites are required to comply with section 508 of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Developing an IE-only web application makes this compliance impossible.
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.
I won't give it away, but you've sure got your work cut out for you... :)
.Net, and not C# either -- VB.Net, to calm down the old timers. Just play along, build the app properly and keep mum.
.Net works perfectly well with FireFox if you set it up to be compatible with multiple browsers. All you have to do is make sure your build target isn't I.E.
Here's my advice:
1. If it works in Firefox, it'll work fine in I.E... BUT NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. So as you build your web pages, test in Firefox, THEN in I.E. for good measure. Pay special attention to tables and stylesheets. If you stick to plain-vanilla JavaScript you should be mostly ok, but if you're going to do something fancy, get the O'Reilly pocket guide. It arranges features by browser so you can see what is supported where.
2. When the agency management tells you they want you to only support I.E. say very carefully "yes, yes, don't worry, I'll support I.E. fully". Don't elaborate! Let them think that Firefox interoperability is a happy accident. Play dumb. Trust me on this, I've had the "IE sucks" argument with them over and over, they will NEVER get it. They're in love with Microsoft products; they're practically addicted to them. At a time when many other agencies in this state are going with Java on Linux, they're going
3. Although you shouldn't discuss this with the agency management (it'll just spook them),
Good luck!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!