[plug] police & nurses credit society netlink page

[James Devenish]

In message <200401200746.15845.sscott at iinet.net.au>
on Tue, Jan 20, 2004 at 07:46:15AM +0800, Simon Scott wrote:
> Its a very good idea to try to determine the capabilities of the browser so 
> you dont send unrenderable crap,
[...]
> The main problem is that developers dont test on all the different browsers, 
> and thus have no idea of the capabilities of the majority of them.

But that doesn't explain why a site should fail to work if you don't
send a recognised user agent string. Surely, if a browser is
unrecognised, the website should default to standardised behaviour?

> I think everyone should at least have a text only version, a basic
> HTML version, and then a more advanced version with js etc. XML and
> XSL will help you with this too.

What would be great is if web developers had some appreciation of the
significance and merits (or otherwise!) of such strategies (e.g. if you
visited the immediate-past incarnation of www.transperth.wa.gov.au, you
will have found that they had a "text only" version...that required the
same JavaScript as the main site. Even the current website's menu system
requires JavaScript -- and don't bother clicking on the plain 'Help'
link or using the 'Search' facility! Currently, they advertised an
"accessibility option" that amounts to a cookie-based facility for
changing font size!?!?!?)