Best viewed with …

Objavljeno: 20. studenoga 2005.

Sjećate li se onih napornih napomena best viewed with Internet Explorer / Netscape Navigator, koje su nekada bile česte na internet stranicama?

No, jučer sam, u neuspješnoj potrazi za jednom knjigom, obišao nekoliko online knjižara, a posljednja na mom popisu bila je Profilova. Evo jednog bitnog detalja koji je (neočekivano i, vjerojatno, trajno) zapečatio moju budućnost Profilovog kupca: ja sam korisnik Firefoxa. A kad sam u Firefox utipkao “http://www.profil.hr” dočekala me sljedeća poruka: za pristup ovim stranicama potreban Vam je Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Većina korisnika Interneta bi samo slegnula ramenima i pokrenula IE. Međutim, ja Internet Explorer pokrećem samo i jedino kad želim provjeriti vidi li se jednako iz svih preglednika neka stranica na kojoj radim. Razlog zašto jučer nisam htio pokrenuti IE nije bio inat. Ovo, zapravo, i nema nikakve veze sa IE-om. Ovo ima veze s Profilovim debilnim webmasterom. Vjerujte mi, sve što je usklađeno s dogovorenim, standardiziranim i od strane Konzorcija WWW preporučenim tehnologijama (HTML/XHTML i CSS) jednako dobro se vidi iz Firefoxa kao i iz Internet Explorera. Štoviše, Firefox prednjači u implementaciji najnovijih verzija tih tehnologija.

Pravi odgovor na pitanje zašto korisnici Firefoxa na Profilovim stranicama vide samo ovo blesavo upozorenje dao je Tim Berners Lee, otac Weba, u FAQ-u na svojim osobnim stranicama:

Q: What do you make of the branding attempt of companies, by putting little icons on their home pages saying, “best when viewed with Microsoft Explorer, or Navigator?”

A: This comes from an anxiousness to use the latest proprietary features which have not been agreed by all companies. It is done either by those who have an interest in pushing a particular company, or it is done by those who are anxious to take the community back to the dark ages of computing when a floppy from a PC wouldn’t read on a Mac, and a Wordstar document wouldn’t read in Word Perfect, or an EBCDIC file wouldn’t read on an ASCII machine. It’s fine for individuals whose work is going to be transient and who aren’t worried about being read by anyone. However, corporate IT strategists should think very carefully about committing to the use of features which will bind them into the control of any one company. The web has exploded because it is open. It has developed so rapidly because the creative forces of thousands of companies are building on the same platform. Binding oneself to one company means one is limiting one’s future to the innovations that one company can provide.

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