A large percentage of visitors to the WaSP website use browsers other than the Web’s most numerically popular browser, for professional or political reasons.
#NETNEWSWIRE 3.3.2 FULL#
There are many reasons why people use minority browsers, like Opera, Flock, Camino, OminWeb, Konqueror and the like ( full disclosure: I work for Opera).
The COI says “Avoid using statements such as, ‘this page is best viewed with Browser X’", and then goes on to advocate pushing users to change their browser. Intended by whom? Are we back to the bad old days when webmasters strove for pixel-perfect rendering, even on governmental sites which are largely content-driven rather than design-dependant? This page is best viewed with Browser X
It may be listed as "semi-supported", which is defined: "A browser is semi-supported if the content and navigation works but the website does not display as intended”. If a browser appears in visitor logs as being below an arbitrary percentage of total “unique visitors” then it should not be listed as being “fully supported” in the site’s accessibility or help pages.
#NETNEWSWIRE 3.3.2 PDF#
The central message of the draft guidelines (which are not available in HTML, only Word (280K) and PDF (160K)) is that public sector webmasters need not test in less-popular browsers. I’m pleased to see that the COI advises that browsers on Windows, Mac and Linux be tested, that assistive technologies be tested, and it’s good that the draft guidance recognises that different sites have different target audiences.īut the central premise of the draft guidelines is fundamentally flawed. Public sector websites have a responsibility to be inclusive and not exclude groups of users but it would be impractical to test websites on every available browser. This guidance has been developed to assist those delivering public sector websites to determine which web browsers to use for testing. Last friday, the UK government’s Central Office of Information ( COI) published a public consultation on browser standards for public sector websites: This blog post is superseded by UK government browser guidelines: good sense prevails. UK government draft browser guidance is daft browser guidanceīy Bruce Lawson | September 8th, 2008 | Filed in Accessibility, Action, Browsers, General, Web Standards (general) Skip to comment form
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