Blaming the User is Rude
Jeremy Zawodny argues that his browser is fine but the Yahoo site has a problem, not the other way around. Do you agree? What responsibility does a user have to be up to date, or standards compliant, or have the right plug in? What responsibility does the web site have to the user to make the experience excellent?
March 24th, 2004 at 4:00 pm
Jeremy Zawodny argues that his browser is fine but the Yahoo site has a problem, not the other way around. Do you agree?
Yes. The issue is really whether Yahoo can offer the basic functionality to everyone, or whether they are deliberately limiting their audience due to either malice or incompetence.
It’s usually incompetence. The site probably does work with “minority” browsers and is just blocking on the UA string. Even if it doesn’t work on minority browsers, it could probably be made to quite easily. In fact it is probably easier to make it work on all browsers than it is to fill it full of bells and whistles that degrade disgracefully.
What responsibility does a user have to be up to date, or standards compliant, or have the right plug in?
This is really a different issue. If a browser (say Netscape 4) has a fistful of serious bugs, and yet there is has been an upgrade for it existing for a sufficient time, users of that browser shouldn’t expect web sites to spend extra time to code around their choice of buggy software. In other words, there’s a difference between using a minority browser, and using a buggy minority browser for which there is a free upgrade.
As for users having the right plugin, designers should really remember the saying “be liberal in what you accept, be conservative in what you send”. Relying on plugins should be avoided, but using them as non-essential bells and whistles is fine. Basically, things should degrade gracefully, however that’s a concept that many designers have trouble understanding, especially if they are coming from the world of print, where it doesn’t apply.
What responsibility does the web site have to the user to make the experience excellent?
Um, a big responsibility? Really, really big?
March 25th, 2004 at 1:09 am
I think the old adage “the customer is always right” has to come into play here.
While you can support more browsers and do what you can to degrade gracefully, there are still users out there who are using ancient browsers, users using brand new broken browsers, and users who are idiots.
But you don’t call them idiots. That’s just bad business.