I agree completely. Designers should be expected to make some concessions for compatibility's sake, but there comes a point where it just doesn't make sense to keep supporting broken technology.
Though, in my experience, a properly coded XHTML page will still be displayed in its entirety on broken browsers - it just won't be as pretty. NS4 users are the ones who still have a black and white TV in the era of color broadcasting. They can still watch the program; it just won't look as good as it might with a color TV.
Being a web designer, and generally in favor of W3C compliance and accessibility standards, I have encountered some resistance to the prospect of putting effort towards making sites accessible, probably due to the relatively low percentage of disabled users.
However, I've read a few somewhat-hypothetical cases of technology that was developed for the disabled being of possible benefit to the non-disabled; i.e., that perhaps people in general may want to use website screen-readers to enable them to access and interact with web content in situations where hands-off or eyes-off interaction is required (such as while driving a car).
Such technology is not in widespread use now, but to what degree might it become more prevalent among the general population of web users?
There's another type, which is (like me) people too poor to afford a real ISP and, since Juno is about the only free one that hasn't either (a) started not being free, (b) gone out of business, or (c) been bought by Juno, must put up with the crap in order to get online once in a while.
None of the icky-sounding stuff like making me keep my computer on all the time, or the evil screen-saver which automatically connects to Juno at its discretion, really applies to me since I have an older installation of it which, every time a "Juno Upgrade" is downloaded (automatically), Juno tries to patch itself to the newer version (which probably includes all that icky stuff) and fails.
Though, I can only connect for a few minutes a day, if I'm lucky. But hey, it's free:)
There's an mp3 in the top 40 at mp3.com by Don't Eat Pete (http://www.mp3.com/DontEatPete) called "DeCSS" - it's the source code sung in a sort of poetic-prose style to acoustic folk music.
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I agree completely. Designers should be expected to make some concessions for compatibility's sake, but there comes a point where it just doesn't make sense to keep supporting broken technology.
Though, in my experience, a properly coded XHTML page will still be displayed in its entirety on broken browsers - it just won't be as pretty. NS4 users are the ones who still have a black and white TV in the era of color broadcasting. They can still watch the program; it just won't look as good as it might with a color TV.
Being a web designer, and generally in favor of W3C compliance and accessibility standards, I have encountered some resistance to the prospect of putting effort towards making sites accessible, probably due to the relatively low percentage of disabled users.
However, I've read a few somewhat-hypothetical cases of technology that was developed for the disabled being of possible benefit to the non-disabled; i.e., that perhaps people in general may want to use website screen-readers to enable them to access and interact with web content in situations where hands-off or eyes-off interaction is required (such as while driving a car).
Such technology is not in widespread use now, but to what degree might it become more prevalent among the general population of web users?
There's another type, which is (like me) people too poor to afford a real ISP and, since Juno is about the only free one that hasn't either (a) started not being free, (b) gone out of business, or (c) been bought by Juno, must put up with the crap in order to get online once in a while. None of the icky-sounding stuff like making me keep my computer on all the time, or the evil screen-saver which automatically connects to Juno at its discretion, really applies to me since I have an older installation of it which, every time a "Juno Upgrade" is downloaded (automatically), Juno tries to patch itself to the newer version (which probably includes all that icky stuff) and fails. Though, I can only connect for a few minutes a day, if I'm lucky. But hey, it's free :)
There's an mp3 in the top 40 at mp3.com by Don't Eat Pete (http://www.mp3.com/DontEatPete) called "DeCSS" - it's the source code sung in a sort of poetic-prose style to acoustic folk music.
Eric