RE: Iconize weather info and something else

[Max H. <ma...@fl...>]

> >> We should also be careful not to send the JavaScript to people who
> >> use older browsers - PHP has a function that can help with this
> >> (get_browser()).
> >
> > I'm not convinved that it's worth the bother. When 0.01% of people
> > are using browsers that won't understand this kind of javascript,
> > it's probably not worth it. 5 years ago, yes, you had to take into
> > account the fact that a good handful of people would be using
> > netscape 2, but even then, we were designing for the shiny new
> > Netscape 3, with all it's advanced features.
>
> Yes, but people might have javascript turned off, even in their new
> fancy browser. So, there should still be a way to get the normal
> report.
>
> > There is a reason for doing a browser-detect though, or at least
> > finding a way around the problem: some people use screen readers, or
> > parsers like betsie to present easy-to-read versions of a page. They
> > won't like javascript.
>
> I don't know betsie, but you're right: there has to be an option to
> turn this javascript-thing off. And it would be preferable if the
> script could try and guess when to turn if off.

get_browser() depends on browscap.ini being properly defined and kept up to
date, and won't help with people who've disabled js.  Since browscap does
not get installed by default with PHP, I think we're asking for trouble by
using it. Sure, give people an option, but I don't think we should be using
get_browser() at all. This is something for application designers to worry
about, whereas phpweather is a library rather than an application.

It would make more sense IMO to start building this kind of functionality
into the CVS tree. I think that a lot of what's in CVS is nearly ready for
release, so we should be concentrating on making a release out of it, rather
than tweaking the old stuff. The functions in CVS (eg browsing to the
airport of choice) are more at the application level than the current
releases.

Max