A properly formatted page allows content to be available to everyone. For example, part of the W3C specs allow you to specify a separate style sheet for use with handheld devices. I've done this myself on our website at work, reformatting content completely for handhelds. Of course, its up to the browser to recognize this, but standards compliance is a two-way street. Both websites and browsers need to recognize and be in compliance to standards to allow content accessibility in just such cases. Kind of the whole idea of a website.
Any site that puts out content that doesn't have special formatting and alternate content for handhelds also probably doesn't have it for the sight-impaired, or others with special accessibility requirements. It's not really that hard to do and no one has an excuse to not do it.
While it looks this story is incorrect, it still should be pointed out that the problem is not designing websites to work with specific browsers, it is getting them to comply to existing standards.
If major sites like Yahoo started coding for W3C standards it would push developers of compliance-challenged browsers <cough>Microsoft</cough> to fix their software.
Then, in the Utopia that would develop, web developers would know that their compliant code would display the same in whatever browser was used. Kind of the whole idea for standards, you know?
Oh, and then monkeys would fly out of my butt.
Not exactly true. Look at any site that reports web usage trends and IE is not only on the way down, it's been happening since about May 2004.
Also, consider the amount of Intel boxes out there. This is a market Microsoft not only "lead," it owned! Now look at the percentage of Intel boxes running Windows today, versus 10 years ago.
Microsoft's "lead" has ebbed and flowed over the years, and as with most empires, their's is on a downward spiral. It won't happen tomorrow, or even 5 years from now, but they have passed their zenith.
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Any site that puts out content that doesn't have special formatting and alternate content for handhelds also probably doesn't have it for the sight-impaired, or others with special accessibility requirements. It's not really that hard to do and no one has an excuse to not do it.
Works fine for me with Firefox 1.01.
While it looks this story is incorrect, it still should be pointed out that the problem is not designing websites to work with specific browsers, it is getting them to comply to existing standards. If major sites like Yahoo started coding for W3C standards it would push developers of compliance-challenged browsers <cough>Microsoft</cough> to fix their software. Then, in the Utopia that would develop, web developers would know that their compliant code would display the same in whatever browser was used. Kind of the whole idea for standards, you know? Oh, and then monkeys would fly out of my butt.
Not exactly true. Look at any site that reports web usage trends and IE is not only on the way down, it's been happening since about May 2004.
Also, consider the amount of Intel boxes out there. This is a market Microsoft not only "lead," it owned! Now look at the percentage of Intel boxes running Windows today, versus 10 years ago.
Microsoft's "lead" has ebbed and flowed over the years, and as with most empires, their's is on a downward spiral. It won't happen tomorrow, or even 5 years from now, but they have passed their zenith.