Re: Railway jigsaw puzzles

On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:51:38 +0000, Arthur Figgis put finger to
keyboard and typed:

Mark Goodge wrote:
On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:30:58 -0000, kim put finger to keyboard and
typed:
I've seen websites that don't display properly on IE6 let alone FireFox. In
some cases they can't be accessed with IE6 (or its AOL equivalent) at all!
The webmaster's stock reply was that everyone should upgrade to FireFox or
IE7.

That's not actually such a bad response. IE6 is horribly insecure and
very badly broken in terms of standards compliance. As a web author, I
try to stick to standards as far as possible, and it doesn't bother me
that obsolete browsers can't handle it.

The other day I had a message telling me to upgrade Opera to Netscape 4!
Just like the good old days.

That is bad programming, because it's not recognising a
standards-compliant browser and telling you to use one that isn't
compliant! But that's very different from telling people to stop using
faulty browers and get one that works properly.

People shouldn't underestimate the number of "well it works on my
computer, the customers will just have to upgrade won't they?" managers
still out there (well, out there until the revolution. At which point
their numbers will drop very rapidly).

They seem to correlate with the "I'm a manager, so I don't need to
listen to 'nerds' (he he he), why, even my nephew can 'do computers' so
what is the fuss about interwebs. Anyway, we've a meeting scheduled to
choose which shade of white paper our print brochure should be printed
on. And can someone reinstall Google on my computer?".

People who think that it's a good idea to carry on using obsolete and
insecure software such as IE6 are the ones with their fingers in their
ears refusing to listen to the nerds!

The majority of spam and viruses are propagated by means of botnets -
networks of compromised PCs infected by means of browser exploits.
People who refuse to upgrade to a more secure browser are indirectly
responsible for a lot of the harm that floats around the Internet. If
I catch someone using IE6 I would quite happily go round their house
and forcibly disconnect them from the Internet, using a pair of wire
clippers if necessary. That kind of anti-social laziness has no place
on a co-operative network like the Internet.

Mark
--
"There must be a place, under the sun, where hearts of olden
glory grow young"
http://mark.goodge.co.uk - my pointless blog
http://www.good-stuff.co.uk - my less pointless stuff
.

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