Re: [Webware-discuss] Login failure, cookies and sessions

[Mike O. <ir...@ms...>]

On Fri, May 12, 2001 at 03:40:18PM -0400, Chuck Esterbrook wrote:
> I develop sites for clients and the question always comes down to this:
>    What is the profile of the users of the site?

True, our users' profile is a bit unusual.  A significant %age (A) don't
have IE available on their platform, (B) use non-mainstream or experimental
browsers, (C) live in countries where they can't afford recent
hardware, and/or (D) would be less likely to buy our products if they
perceive we've "sold out to the Netscape-and-IE-enhanced crowd".

> If they have technology X (cookies, style sheets, whatever), then we use
> that to our advantage. "Have" usually means "99%" because putting in the
> extra development hours, consideration and testing for the 1% that are
> using Netscape 3.x (for example) is not worth the expense.

Leveraging the technology they have is good, but I also look at what is
the minimum technology necessary to do the job.  If you're presenting
a catalog, of course you will need product images.  But if other images
are just decorations peripheral to the content, why not skip them?
Java script that presses a submit button for you when you press Enter
is cool.  Javascript that pops up a special window without a menu bar
for what is really an ordinary HTML file, um...

-- 
-Mike (Iron) Orr, ir...@ms...  (if mail problems: ms...@ji...)
   http://mso.oz.net/     English * Esperanto * Russkiy * Deutsch * Espan~ol