, in the not-quite-dead browser war: Netscape, not IE, put on new CompuServe [via Zeldman]. Of course this could become big news for web developers and internet people generally.
Now Live! Watch Microsoft
play “brinksmanship” with the DoJ: Microsoft CEO: State Sanctions Would Destroy Windows. Idiots. It would destroy Windows because as a direct result of the previous anti-trust problems Microsoft made it so – totally their choice, and with this in mind in the first place. They tried to innoculate themselves by intertwining the browser with the OS. They now think that people didn’t realize that they were trying this all along, and that they can now scare people with the idea. I just hope the DoJ and/or the dissenting states have the pills to call their bluff.
Brainstorms and Raves
: Accessibility Lockout for Olympics 2002 Site — Again?!. A good quick rundown of some problems with the official site for the Games this winter. Add to it that the site’s URLs are virtually useless. Accessibility in the case of this site is a problem even for fully able people with regular browsers using all the tools built in. It’s too bad, it’s a huge missed opportunity. Doing a site like that should be an opportunity for some really innovative work – but it was clearly squandered. I’d love to get my hands on a project like that and hire a dream team to develop the thing.
The wires were buzzing
today when the story broke that MSN.com shuts out non-Microsoft browsers. Their stated reason? “‘For browsers that we know don’t support those standards or that we can’t insure will get a great experience for the customer, we do serve up a page that suggests that they upgrade to an IE browser that does support the’ standards.”
It seems that they’re just pushing the browser upgrade campaign, as suggested by the nice folks at the Web Standards Project.
Well it might seem like that’s what this is about. But it’s not. They’ve clearly taken on similar tactics – but wrapping themselves up in W3C standards? It’s BS. Utter bullshit.
Fact is, for all their hemming and hawing about web standards, MSN works fine in Netscape 6.1 for OS X, Omniweb, and even Netscape 4.7x (well, it displays, if only minimally). No, this isn’t about web standards. This is obviously about trying to get people to upgrade to a particular standards-compliant browser.
I’m not surprised or angry with MS though. I expect this sort of behaviour from them. But to pervert the work of people legitimately trying to support and encourage web standards? Bullshit.
Updates here have been
sporadic due to a great deal of busy-ness, but also because I’ve been working on a new design and playing around with Moveable Type, the new micro-CMS on the market.
The new design is going to be pretty nice, I think (if I do say so myself), but I’m having trouble rendering it using no-tables techniques. My current thinking is that the world should progress in that direction ultimately, and for extremely simple pages it is much more efficient to work with than tables are. Trouble is, there are just as many fudges and workarounds required as there were using tables, which pretty much makes the whole endeavour beside the point. So I’m going to have to make a decision – and right now, I’m leaning towards using tables. The point of all-CSS design is to dispense with workarounds and browser silliness (at least one of the points is to do so). If I can’t do that, I don’t see the point in making the switch.
