Browsers for those IE-only sites

[Robin Laing]

Dotan Cohen wrote:
> On 6/24/05, Edward Dekkers <edward at tripled.iinet.net.au> wrote:
> 
>>>Thanks, I'll go do that. I saw mention of the KHTML engine, the opera
>>>engine, and the gecko engine. I assume that there is an IE engine, as
>>>well (the basis of IE)? Of course it would not be open source, but are
>>>there people working on an open source equivelent? Like open office is
>>>to MS office? It would have to be reverse-engineered I assume, but a
>>>lot of other stuff has been reverse engineered already. If myself, not
>>>a programmer, wanted to encourage the start of such a project, then
>>>how would I go about doing that?
>>>
>>>Dotan Cohen
>>
>>I would urge you STRONGLY not to even think about going that route.
>>
>>As people on this list here have mentioned, it is the web sites that are
>>at fault, not the browsers. The non-IE engines are pretty much all W3C
>>compliant, and really, that is more than enough.
>>
>>We need to discourage web masters from using proprietary Bill Gates code
>>in their web sites, otherwise we're saying it's OK for one man to rule
>>what browser we use.
>>
>>This sound right to you?
>>
>>I didn't think so.
>>
>>"Proper" web sites work with any browser as long as they stick to the
>>accepted W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) guidelines, in fact a lot of
>>them now show the W3C logo on the page to say they're compliant.
>>
>>Regards,
>>Ed.
>>
> 
> 
> Problem is, in my opinion, that those 'webmusterers' use microsoft
> tools to design those sites. Frontpage, for instance. Which is logical
> as they use a microsoft OS and microsoft office applications.
> 
> I aggree they they must be pushed to use standard code. But that won't
> happen until they switch tools, something that I don't foresee
> happening. Israeli sites, in particular, are very bad in this respect.
> And there are few alternatives, none in some cases.

This a cop-out.  It is being lazy.  There are many standards based WWW 
sites that use the same tools.  The Webmasters take the time to 
configure and build the correct templates to ensure compliance and 
test their pages.  Again, it is the designer to ensure that they 
follow the standards.  Lazy designers create crappy pages.

> 
> I myself can live without these MS-only sites, but my better half
> cannot. So I will happily run IE in wine for her, and she is smiles
> despite the fact that both of us know that she would prefer windows
> and IE and Word. She doesn't care if the computer has a virus or spy
> because it doesn't affect her daily computer use: webbased email and
> Word documents. But she puts up with me and my linux because she loves
> me.
> 

Yet my wife wants a new laptop and it has to have Linux on it.  She 
cannot stand the crashes and virus problems.  Heck, she has an new Mac 
laptop for work but she still wants to get a Linux notebook.  I love 
my wife for this.  :)

> If we want people like Ety to use linux, we must give them a
> comparable user experience to that of windows. Open Office 1.x didn't
> even come close to MS Office, we'll see how beta 2 does now that I
> installed FC4. But as for her websites, I must find a solution soon.
> 

My wife uses OOo for both home and work as it works better than MS 
Office when moving documents between different users.  She came across 
her first problem with OOo beta last night.  I downloaded the latest 
beta but I don't know if it is working.

As you say, your wife doesn't care about the headaches but let windows 
trash itself and slowdown due to spyware and trojans and see what she 
thinks then.

Let your wife buy her own computer and let her know that she has to 
maintain it.  Let her know the work that is involved.  Of course many 
people say XP Pro is very stable but not from my experience.

As my retired father said to me a week ago.  Linux just works and works.

-- 
Robin Laing