Blocking out people based on their browser simply lowers you to Microsoft's level. Rather, we should frame the discussion in terms of invitation vs. exclusion(or, if you want to be more hyperbolic, freedom vs. tyranny).
Much better would be to check the browser, and if it's IE, put up additional information on the page that says something like the following [which has been written in haste; someone can undoubtedly word it better].
===
This site is Open For Business! Some companies have started an unfortunate trend of locking you out of their website if you don't use their products. (Link to cnet.com or Yahoo! article.) We don't do that. We're Open for business. This website has been written using the latest standards. It looks the best when you use a standards-compliant browser like [insert favorite browser name here], but it is viewable with _any_ browser. We appreciate everyone who comes to our site. We don't believe in locking people out. Our doors are Open for business.
===
As several posters have said here, you don't shut out people with older browsers, you just present them with something that's not quite as visually appealing. And yes, as several others have said, separating the presentation from content actually does make your page more accessible.
My updated home page still looks just fine in Lynx, and it has a "please upgrade" link that goes to this upgrade page. Note that it doesn't force you to go anywhere or do anything that you don't want to do. Happy now?
that's not legal XML; you can't have a bare attribute. You must say static="static"
And the ampersands in another of their examples will cause all sorts of dreadful problems:
<variable name="myvars" &x="10" &y="20" &z="30"/>
There are XML-compliant ways to handle this sort of thing; too bad they didn't use them.
For those looking for an XML-type solution to the problem, take a look at the XSL formatting objects spec. Sections 6 onward tell what kind of capabilities are available.
The Apache XML project has FOP, which translates XSL:FO to PDF.
"bear in mind that all of the open source projects above run on all the platforms I've ever used them on, without any recompilation. Xerces worked on Win2K and linux. Tomcat worked on Win2K, linux, and Solaris."
Amen to that, brother. I have been learning XML/XSLT, and Apache's Xalan worked great on Linux and Macintosh with no recompiling necessary.
Pat Buchanan went on the Today show and "agreed [that] the ballot was confusing and that many of
his votes there were meant for Gore -- enough, he added, that had they gone to Gore he would have won the presidential election." See this article.
Seems as if he also buys the statistical argument.
Every time I've seen Hagelin on TV or heard him on radio, I've come away with the impression that he is a genuinely good person. I caught the last segment of "Hannity & Colmes" on Fox where they interviewed him; one of them asked him something to the effect of, "What is someone as nice as you doing in politics?"
I like Hagelin's stand on the issues, and having someone who might actually be a caring person, as opposed to a "compassionate conservative," would be icing on the cake.
I find it immensely amusing that the two links on the MutantWatch Links Page link to actual sites. The latter link, it would appear, belongs to a proponent of "Creation Science."
I imagine this juxtaposition of a movie promo site and a real site (I was going to say "fiction and fact", but that would open it up for the waaay too obvious response) may anger many people, and I, for one, couldn't be more pleased that it will.
I saw a picture of the disk in the newspaper or in a magazine a couple of days ago. It starts off with readable text that becomes smaller and smaller as it spirals inwards, so the idea of "magnify me" is built into the design.
As a non-observant Jew to whom atheism looks better and better, I'm a bit disappointed that they had to go with a religious text, but, as others have pointed out, that doesn't stop some other group from creating another similar, secular disk.
There seems to be a trend here that says ecommerce is the only criterion for a "real site with actual users;" anything else is presumed to be a minor site.
Consider the following: ZDNet, cNet, travel.com, thetrip.com (Apache); The Weather Channel, CNN, Smithsonian Institution, New York Times, General Electric, Nokia, Merrill Lynch (Netscape). I wouldn't regard any of these as a "little piss-ant website;" I'd reckon they all get fairly heavy usage by real people, and not one is running IIS.
True, I could have gotten the interactivity for the exercises in my [shameless self-promotion] Russian alphabet and chmod tutorials with server-side scripting, but that would require a connection to a server.
By doing it in JavaScript, I can offer the tutorial as a downloadable file that can be used off-line at hard disk speeds -- we don't all have T1 lines into our houses, you know.
I must confess that I do open up a sub-window in part of the Russian tutorial for the audio player control. Now if only I could add some really annoying animation.:-)
The only way this could have gotten 100% from me is if it had been turned in by Pirini Scleroso. (See the SCTV FAQ). I haven't seen such bad writing since I was an assistant in an ESl class.
I'm surprised that there have been so few comments about the obvious drug references in the student's story. You'd think this would also have been a big deal in Texas.
Amen to that, brother! I tried a quick experiment as follows:
x = -7; if x < 0 : print "x less than zero" print "it is negative"
with the first "print" tabbed over, and the second line spaced over to line up exactly (in my editor). Python rejected it, of course. Try explaining to Joe Average Student that his indentation is wrong, even though it looks just great. Adding an extra blank on a line can destroy an entire program. And you call this "friendly" and easy for beginners? Get thee to a library and pick up a copy of "Humanized Input" by Gilb and Weinberg. Read the section about "the blank", on pages 59-60.
1) Nobody is saying "teach only homosexuality" -- instead, "teach that homosexuality exists". 2) Nobody is saying "You can teach anything but Christianity"; rather, "You can not teach any one religion, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, you-name-it as being the only 'true' religion." 3) I am offended that you associate bisexuality (and, I presume, homosexuality) with bestiality. Apparently, the fact that sexual acts between consenting adults is not equivalent to non-consensual sex between a human and an animal has been lost on you. 4) And yes, I am very definitely "christophobic." As a Jew, I have experienced some forty years of so-called loving christians telling me that my deeply held beliefs are wrong and that I must abandon them. This sort of thing makes one leery of the good intentions of such "christians."
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Blocking out people based on their browser simply lowers you to Microsoft's level. Rather, we should frame the discussion in terms of invitation vs. exclusion(or, if you want to be more hyperbolic, freedom vs. tyranny).
Much better would be to check the browser, and if it's IE, put up additional information on the page that says something like the following [which has been written in haste; someone can undoubtedly word it better].
===
This site is Open For Business! Some companies have started an unfortunate trend of locking you out of their website if you don't use their products. (Link to cnet.com or Yahoo! article.) We don't do that. We're Open for business. This website has been written using the latest standards. It looks the best when you use a standards-compliant browser like [insert favorite browser name here], but it is viewable with _any_ browser. We appreciate everyone who comes to our site. We don't believe in locking people out. Our doors are Open for business.
===
As several posters have said here, you don't shut out people with older browsers, you just present them with something that's not quite as visually appealing. And yes, as several others have said, separating the presentation from content actually does make your page more accessible.
My updated home page still looks just fine in Lynx, and it has a "please upgrade" link that goes to this upgrade page. Note that it doesn't force you to go anywhere or do anything that you don't want to do. Happy now?
<script static src="utilties:memory_monitor.dml"/>
that's not legal XML; you can't have a bare attribute. You must say static="static" And the ampersands in another of their examples will cause all sorts of dreadful problems:
<variable name="myvars" &x="10" &y="20" &z="30"/>
There are XML-compliant ways to handle this sort of thing; too bad they didn't use them.
The Apache XML project has FOP, which translates XSL:FO to PDF.
Amen to that, brother. I have been learning XML/XSLT, and Apache's Xalan worked great on Linux and Macintosh with no recompiling necessary.
Pat Buchanan went on the Today show and "agreed [that] the ballot was confusing and that many of
his votes there were meant for Gore -- enough, he added, that had they gone to Gore he would have won the presidential election." See this article.
Seems as if he also buys the statistical argument.
Every time I've seen Hagelin on TV or heard him on radio, I've come away with the impression that he is a genuinely good person. I caught the last segment of "Hannity & Colmes" on Fox where they interviewed him; one of them asked him something to the effect of, "What is someone as nice as you doing in politics?"
I like Hagelin's stand on the issues, and having someone who might actually be a caring person, as opposed to a "compassionate conservative," would be icing on the cake.
I find it immensely amusing that the two links on the MutantWatch Links Page link to actual sites. The latter link, it would appear, belongs to a proponent of "Creation Science."
I imagine this juxtaposition of a movie promo site and a real site (I was going to say "fiction and fact", but that would open it up for the waaay too obvious response) may anger many people, and I, for one, couldn't be more pleased that it will.
I saw a picture of the disk in the newspaper or in a magazine a couple of days ago. It starts off with readable text that becomes smaller and smaller as it spirals inwards, so the idea of "magnify me" is built into the design.
As a non-observant Jew to whom atheism looks better and better, I'm a bit disappointed that they had to go with a religious text, but, as others have pointed out, that doesn't stop some other group from creating another similar, secular disk.
Consider the following: ZDNet, cNet, travel.com, thetrip.com (Apache); The Weather Channel, CNN, Smithsonian Institution, New York Times, General Electric, Nokia, Merrill Lynch (Netscape). I wouldn't regard any of these as a "little piss-ant website;" I'd reckon they all get fairly heavy usage by real people, and not one is running IIS.
True, I could have gotten the interactivity for the exercises in my [shameless self-promotion] Russian alphabet and chmod tutorials with server-side scripting, but that would require a connection to a server.
:-)
By doing it in JavaScript, I can offer the tutorial as a downloadable file that can be used off-line at hard disk speeds -- we don't all have T1 lines into our houses, you know.
I must confess that I do open up a sub-window in part of the Russian tutorial for the audio player control. Now if only I could add some really annoying animation.
The only way this could have gotten 100% from me is if it had been turned in by Pirini Scleroso.
(See the SCTV FAQ). I haven't seen such bad writing since I was an assistant in an ESl class.
I'm surprised that there have been so few comments about the obvious drug references in the student's story. You'd think this would also have been a big deal in Texas.
Amen to that, brother! I tried a quick experiment as follows:
x = -7;
if x < 0 :
print "x less than zero"
print "it is negative"
with the first "print" tabbed over, and the second line spaced over to line up exactly (in my editor). Python rejected it, of course. Try explaining to Joe Average Student that his indentation is wrong, even though it looks just great. Adding an extra blank on a line can destroy an entire program. And you call this "friendly" and easy for beginners? Get thee to a library and pick up a copy of "Humanized Input" by Gilb and Weinberg. Read the section about "the blank", on pages 59-60.
1) Nobody is saying "teach only homosexuality" -- instead, "teach that homosexuality exists".
2) Nobody is saying "You can teach anything but Christianity"; rather, "You can not teach any one religion, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, you-name-it as being the only 'true' religion."
3) I am offended that you associate bisexuality (and, I presume, homosexuality) with bestiality. Apparently, the fact that sexual acts between consenting adults is not equivalent to non-consensual sex between a human and an animal has been lost on you.
4) And yes, I am very definitely "christophobic." As a Jew, I have experienced some forty years of so-called loving christians telling me that my deeply held beliefs are wrong and that I must abandon them. This sort of thing makes one leery of the good intentions of such "christians."