US Copyright Office Considering MSIE-only website

wikinerd writes "The United States Copyright Office asks whether you would have any problem if you were required to use Microsoft Internet Explorer in order to pre-register a work via their website. The Norwegian government recently said no to proprietary formats, but it seems that the US government sites should be informed about the existence of non-Microsoft Web browsers, such as Firefox, Konqueror, Opera, and Safari. I have written a letter about this issue, which is posted on my blog for everyone to copy and base on it their own response. If they see how many people use alternative browsers, they'll probably reconsider and stay within the W3C standards."

Comments

Dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:
"Support for Netscape 7.2, Firefox 1.0.3, and Mozilla 1.7.7 is planned but will not be available when preregistration goes into effect."

So support for other browsers is already planned. I imagine that if enough people complain about it starting out as only IE, they will just postpone this preregistration plan until they have the other browser support ready. All that does is make people who want to use IE wait longer.

Stupid.

Re:Dumb.

[gsasha]

Wrong.

First, this "planned" status may take unnecessary long. After all, when they are serving the majority of potential visitors with the IE version, there's much less pressure to go and implement the alternate browsers.

Second, and more importantly, if they support all the browsers at the same time, that'll force them, at least to some extent, to make a standards-friendly implementation that will work on all the browsers.

However, if they do IE first, and all the others later, the original version will be full of non-standard IE-specific junk, and the Firefox version will be either ugly and half-functional, or will have to be developed from scratch.

Interesting

[Sierpinski]

I find it extremely interesting that the government in the past has brought an anti-trust suit against Microsoft for being a monopoly, however they themselves would help to propagate this by using their software. Not to mention allowing ONLY their software, they are ensuring that any user who wants to visit their site also must "pay" Microsoft, thus even further contributing to the "monopoly".

I would have thought that if the government was under the impression that Microsoft was a monopoly (true or not), they would have taken steps to help prevent adding to that situation, and support a different browser for their site, or *gasp* don't require *ANY* browser, but rather just design it to be functionally usable by any W3C compliant browser. Add in the 508 compliance for web accessbility, and you can't go wrong.

Government, make up your mind.

Re:Interesting

[jc42]

Most of our customers think we are nuts when we suggest spending more time (their money) so we can get those 2-5% chunks of the browser market, each of which behaves a bit differently.

So don't suggest that, because there's no need. All you need to do is test your pages for standards compliance. There's plenty of software around to do that, much of it free. In my experience, all the HTML standards tests are fast and easy to use. And if IE users have a problem with some page, just suggest that they get a standards-compliant browser. There are several available for MS Windows, either free for us cheapskates, or for sale to those suckers who believe "You get what you pay for". Any can be downloaded and installed from IE in seconds; MS hasn't (yet) included code in IE that blocks access to competitors' sites.

Also, complaining about browsers that behave differently is a red herring. HTML was designed from the start to work differently with different browsers. The folks who invented it were well aware of the differences of screens, and wanted something that could be displayed sensibly on both large and small screens. There's also the question of the visually impaired, so HTML should also work with a speech generator. There's very good reason to not want HTML to behave the same everywhere.

It's arguments like your that make your pages not work sensibly on my Blackberry or my wife's Treo, or for blind people. And you're making the bogus claim that you'd have to test for all of them. Nonsense. All you have to do is use some standards-testing software, and make sure your pages pass their tests. That's cheap and easy, easier than testing against N non-standard browsers.

Re:Interesting

[ednopantz]

>And if IE users have a problem with some page, just suggest that they get a standards-compliant browser.

You have never actually met a customer or an end user, have you? Excluding 90-odd % of the market just isn't an option.

Re:Interesting

[Cereal Box]

So don't suggest that, because there's no need. All you need to do is test your pages for standards compliance.

That's not true. You still need to test that it works in your browser.

I mean, I just wrote a webpage that includes XForms, SVG, XHTML 1.1, and SMIL. But it doesn't work right in Firefox, Konqueror, Safari, or Opera! I don't get it... I wrote 100% W3C standard-compliant code, and according to Slashdot, if you just code to the standards, it'll magically work in every browser! I'm so confused!

All joking aside, I think what you meant to say is that all he needs to do is code to the standards that Firefox (or Konqueror, etc.) supports. There's a big difference between "writing to the standard" and "writing to the supported standard". Contrary to popular Slashdot belief, you cannot write 100% "standards compliant" code and expect it to magically work the second you bring it up in Firefox. It should work, most of the time. So you're wrong in saying that all this guy has to do is feed his pages through the W3C validator and be done with it.

This "code to the standards" Slashdot mantra really irks me. You guys do realize that even if you write to the standard, it's inevitable that you won't get pixel-perfect pages in every standards-compliant browser, right? Or you may run up against rendering bugs that make "100% standards compliant" pages look different from browser to browser.

Seriously guys, W3C standards are not a magic bullet. They aid interoperability, but they in no way guarantee anything about how your page will look or operate in any given browser. And the worst part about these standards are how many "should" clauses there are -- i.e., "the browser should do X if Y", which leaves lots of things up for interpretation, and incompatibility.

In summary, code to the standards as best as you can. But realize that standards support varies from browser to browser, and you'll inevitably have to provide workarounds.

Re:Interesting

[jwhitener]

It really baffles me that designers/coders actually feel like it is some sort of huge challenge to make a site work with all browsers.

If you do a bit of homework (or google it) you'll see a pretty stable set of common code that works with all browsers.

The next step is designing a site only using that code. It really isn't rocket science.

Do you sacrifice some cutting edge features? Of course. But unless your purpose is to wow your audience with cutting edge stuff, there should never be a reason to use those cutting edge features.

One of the sites I'm working with now has over 12,000 pages, and is controlled by 3 style sheets. It is clean, compliant code, that has only THREE browser based changes to the stylesheet (in order to make IE work on a couple newer featurs).

The site has forms, online bill pay, dynamic content, flash, rollovers, and is comprised entirely of divs and css.

Sites that say "IE Only", or "Requires standards compliant browser", or any other variation of saying, in essence,

"Please be inconvienced because of my limitations as a designer"

Need to hire a new web team.

It is quite literally zero extra work to make a complex site work with all browsers if you know what you are doing.

And before someone posts 32 specific code examples showing how its impossible, ask yourself, How could I have done that differently? Why did I need to use that code? I will guarantee that there is another way that will work with both browsers, and if not, that you didn't need to implement that in your site.

Stop. Supporting. Browsers.

[91degrees]

Browsers should support HTML. Websites should be written in HTML.

These are not fundamentally architecturally different pieces of equipment. If you can't create a website that works adeqautely with all browsers, then you don't deserve to be employed as a web designer.

Re:RFTA

[1u3hr]

they will be writing stuff to allow these browsers at a later date.

Without a deadline, it can easily get pushed back and back, until they can say it's working fine with IE only; why bother?

Re:Stop. Supporting. Browsers.

[grasshoppa]

Why is it web designers aren't expected to achieve the same level of competency as any other professional? All I ever hear is how hard it would be to make a site cross compatible.

Well, you know what? Tough shit. Life's hard all around. Let me tell you some day about the vpn solution I had to implement across a dialup link. Oh yeah, and it had to support a full sql application. Any other professional is expected to show, you know, *professionalism* in their field.

Not web designers tho. They expect to be coddled, and allowed to half ass it.

Hmm, the usual 2 minutes hate

[crucini]

But how many of you have ever registered a copyright? If you haven't, isn't it a little disingenuous to write to the Copyright Office complaining?

I'm seeing a lot of comments demanding plain-jane HTML, and denying that it costs anything to support multiple browsers, because you just check for "standards compliance". I used to think this. It's completely wrong today. Many web applications today have rich interfaces approaching desktop apps. Getting them to work cross-browser is damn hard. It is definitely worth doing for a mass-market thing like gmail, but for a niche site used by a handful of attorneys? Hard to justify.

Of course, the rich interface is probably not needed or justified in this governmental site.

The problem is not solvable by standards compliance, at least in the automatable sense. You can have CSS that passes validation, looks fine in IE, and piles things on top of each other in other browsers.

Re:Swings and Roundabouts

[aisaac]

Here is a possible letter body that is less tendentious than that linked in the article.

--

Dear Copyright Office:

I am responding to your August 4 notice on Preregistration of Certain Unpublished Copyright Claims (37 CFR Part 202 [Docket No. RM 2005-9]), in which you ask whether potential preregistrants will unable or unwilling to use Internet Explorer 5.1 or higher with the new electronic form. I am one of an estimated 20% of browser users who does not use Internet Explorer.

I understand that the problem is that you will not be able to upgrade to Siebel 7.8 in time for the October 24 launch, and that Siebel 7.7 offers inadequate guarantees of multiple browser support. I understand that you plan to offer multiple browser support "in the future".

I commend your for developing an electronic form and allowing preregistration. However your announcement of this implementation limitation is worrisome for three reasons.

- You do not identify the source of the limitation. If the electronic form will be compliant with modern web standards (http://www.w3.org/) but will not have been fully tested with other browsers, that is a minor concern. In this case there is high likelihood that all modern browsers will work with the site. If on the other hand the electronic form will actively block other browsers or will contain IE specific code in violation of web standards, this is a larger concern.
- You do not explicitly address section 508 compliance, which as I understand it is a legal requirement upon the Copyright Office. http://www.section508.gov/ It is hard to understand how section 508 compliant website would be unusable with essentially any modern browser.
- You do not identify a time frame for removal of this limitation. If you will fix things in a few weeks, fewer users will be affected than if you will take a couple years.