Re: FLASH: Flash and iCab [rant]

[Frederico]

On 1/25/00 10:55 AM, Stacy Westbrook via

stacythoroughlymodern [dot] com

, said:


>I'm attempting to protest Netscape and Explorer right now because I'm sick

>of their crappy Mac support, so I'm trying out "alternative" browsers.


While I feel very much as you, the project-design-manager part of me 

cringes everytime I think of  YAWB (yet another web browser) that we need 

to accomodate. (;


That said, from what I understood, iCab was being built so it could 

handle standard Netscape plugins. I'm not sure of this;  I haven't looked 

at it for a long time, because CSS and JavaScript weren't working the 

last time I looked, and we rarely consider any browser that can't handle 

JS worthy of anything but our text-only low graphics versions.


Also, you may or may not have heard that we're about to get a version of 

Opera; that should prove to be a fine alternative to the Big Two.


<rant>

While I'm pleased that IE 5 Mac is going to fix a ton of the problems 

we've all been having with 4.x, I'm PISSED OFF at that freakin' Font Size 

Emulator they stuck in that damn thing that emulates the freakin' 96 DPI 

Windows standard. What a clusterfudge!! Leave it to bloody Microsoft to 

try to conform the Mac to their mistakes!! Most generic text-based 

websites won't have a terribly big problem, but a lot of design-intensive 

pages are going to look like CRAP as a result. Why not just redirect them 

to Windows pages? Because there's NO WAY of knowing whether the owner has 

the damn thing switched ON or OFF!! Arrrrrgh!!!


Some of our more militant designers are already border-line banning IE 

4.x from their sites altogether; if the default implementation of IE 5 

ships with that stupid DPI resizing feature ON at 96 DPI, don't be 

surprised if you start hitting sites that bring up every page as , 

"Sorry, we're sick of M$ trying to dominate everyone and everything 

instead of dealing with things in a media design industry standard 

manner, you'll have to choose a properly built browser to see our 

website." 


As a client-advocate, I'm not lucky enough to be able to take that 

position, but I'd sure like to.


With any luck, iCab and Opera will rock so hard that Mac users won't mind 

popping $40-$50 for a web browser that does everything it should, and 

does it right. The trick will be in telling the uninformed masses of iMac 

buyers (nearly 3 million and climbing) to dump that free bundled browser 

and pay for another is really a good idea.

</rant>


Frederico


~If you don't face up to your problems, 

               you get a big plastic cow in your room.~


                           --Doug


Win2000 -- for better or worse -- is on its way. . .



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