David said:
Why on earth is directing visitors to pages designed for
their browser a bad thing????????
The need to redirect implies a deficiency in your "optimized for IE" page.
This may, as Jenny suggests, be a matter of ideology, but believe me, the
decision to code to standards rather than browsers will pay dividends down
the line.
I personally have no pity for users who access my sites with browsers that
don't understand HTML 4, ECMAScript v3, DOM Level 1 (most of it, anyway) or
CSS 1. Note that these are minima, and I do not DENY anyone on the basis of
his browser. I merely lack respect for his browser choice and make no
attempt to accommodate it. Those standards, after all, are each several
years old.
I partly accommodate those with scripting or cookies turned off, but often
require one or both for users who want to use one of my *applications* with
full functionality.
What does "partly" mean here? One example is popup navigational menus. Our
intranet site has them. But if the scripting to open the menu fails for any
reason (such as crappy browser or scripting turned off), the user is sent to
a page that lists all of the links in the drop-down menu.
Does that user experience the full glory of our navigational menus? Who
cares? Does he get the same opportunity to access information? Yes. And that
is truly the only thing that matters when considering divergence from
standards.
--
Dave Anderson
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