Re: this sounds like a whine I know.....

Full-top-quoting az-willie,

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
 az-willie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> While I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a perfect example of how to 
> build a site .. it works fine for browsers using THE DOMINANT OPERATING 
> SYSTEM and major browsers.
> 
> I noticed that first there was a complaint because it doesn't work right 
> on a Mac now you mention using Free BSD which is definitely a non 
> standard operating system.

Jim is 100% correct about his assessment. Web sites built with standards 
should work in any Web browser for any platform. It's not about making 
sure the "dominant" OS and the "dominant" browser can render it 
properly. It's about making content accessible.

I don't understand how you can say FreeBSD is "non-standard". What does 
that precisely mean? BSD is argueably one of the most-used flavours of 
Unix. It's at the heart of OS X and been around for quite a while. It's 
robust, secure, and a powerful Unix. At some point during the trip your 
message took from your computer to mine, it probably passed through more 
than one BSD machine. I don't see the relevance in attacking the choice 
of platform.

The claim that one has designed the browser to work properly with a 
single browser/OS combination is often the cry of a lazy and/or ignorant 
Web designer who does't know how to implement and use Web standards. Why 
would anyone want to limit their audience? Using standards also makes 
for simpler maintenance. A site designed with tables is much harder to 
update than a site designed with CSS and div tags.

Another problem with coding for a specific browser is that browsers 
change. Even intermediary updates can introduce changes to how the 
browser renders a Web page. Who wants to keep up with that? A fluid, 
robust design without a particular browser model in mind means less 
overhead, less hassle, more efficiency.

alistapart.com has some great articles on accessibility and 
standards-compliant design.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/netscape/