Mahesh T. Pai wrote:
The bottom of your page mentions that ``Site optimised for 800 X 600 monitor resolution, java enabled, IE 4.0 or above.''
Probably they meant, "has been tested using" where they said "optimized for". Because I don't run my monitor on 800x600, have java, or use IE, but I can get around the site quite comfortably.
particular operating system. Firstly, it is in no way, `optimisation'. You are simply using public funds for carrying advertisement for a particular company.
Yes, they are being quite evil, considering the technologies they are advertising.
You ought be aware that the users of the world wide web use diverse operating systems and browsers. In order to make things easier for both developers and users of the internet, the W3C consortium (World Wide Web Consortium) has laid down certain standards for web pages; and it would have been appropriate for you to conform to those standards.
Also, you will appreciate that the Internet is a useful medium for people with disabilities to communicate with the outside world, and compliance with the W3C standards automatically ensures that people with disabilities can access your site (for example, using a screen reader). You will appreciate that as an organ of the government, and an organisation discharging Sovereign functions, you have to adhere to certain standards of fairness and propriety.
This is where I have a problem. W3C standards compliance does not necessarily imply ease of use, accessibility or anything like that. You can find plenty of well formed markup, fully standards compliant websites that are absolutely horrendous to use. And no, I am not going to give an example.
Not like any of the sites I am responsible for fail to comply to W3C style and markup specifications, but there are a great deal of websites that don't validate, but still look and work just fine across a wide spectrum of browsers on varying platforms. Google, for instance. There are equally competent groups that work outside the realm of the W3C [ http://whatwg.org/ ] involved in coming up with standards themselves that work at a (hopefully higher) different pace than the W3C and more in tune with rate of evolution of browser technology. There is no real point to any of this, except, compliance with W3C doesn't automatically make it "good" and lack of compliance doesn't make it "bad".
I hope that you will understand the issue in its proper perspective, and ensure that your pages fully conform to W3C standards and further, remove references to specific brands of browsers.
Of course. Ads for specific proprietary technology are totally unacceptable. It's just, for what it's worth, some slightly offset css positioning (when not viewed in IE) and the evil ad apart, this site is quite clean and navigable.
Harish