Instead of saying "hey, great work - hope you can continue to spread the application to other browsers/platforms" you criticize them for the initial target of their release. Seems to me that if they would have tried to do what you and others wanted they would of ended up with a much later release date - worse functionality - and probably burned through a lot more of their own money trying to get to that place.

Whats wrong with a little business focus?

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Doc encourages programmers on other platforms that he doesn't use, so he's not being philosophically consistent, imho. If a Unix geek discovered something new you could do with PHP and it was inspiring in the way Offpost is, if I understand Doc (maybe I don't) he would be championing their cause. I've seen him do it many times. Nothing wrong with that, but the Offpost developers are so sweet and pure, and their software is so beautiful, it really hurts to see them judged as evil. I can't believe Doc used that word about these guys.

BTW, having animals die in the innards of your house is evil. It's happened to me. I hate it. It's the worst thing.

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Are Oddpost's resources so limited that they can't communicate more about what they're up to? Or that they can't put up another page (other than their home page, through which their mail service apparently runs) to explain what's going on to the minority of folks out there using browsers and OSes they don't support?

That's what I don't get.

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It's just two geeks Doc.

You don't hold Unix geeks to that standard. Isn't it your job to help them explain what they're up to? Isn't that what O'Reilly does? Nothing wrong with it, but cut them some slack Doc, it's totally not fair to apply different standards to developers based on the platform they develop for.

BTW, I ran a story about Oddpost on Scripting News after a phone interview on April 4. I think they covered the bases very adequately.

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Why can't I just build something cool and be done with it?

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I read Doc's post, and his response differently. I think he was criticizing putting up a page that completely blocks anyone from getting any information about Oddpost unless you have IE on Windows.

He said:

"Or that they can't put up another page (other than their home page, through which their mail service apparently runs) to explain what's going on to the minority of folks out there using browsers and OSes they don't support?

That's what I don't get. "

They could have put up a description of what they are doing, noted the fact that it only works on Windows, and if they were really nice, maybe a few screenshots. If the images were interesting enough, people might go out of their way to look at it on Windows machine to see what they've done.

If they are programmers looking for work as has been stated, then it makes sense to provide some sort of a nugget for non-IE users. Their next client/employer could be using Netscape.

Just to be clear, Doc isn't saying (as far as I can tell) that what pisses him off is that they shouldn't have developed it for Windows only. Instead, what pisses him off is that they didn't take the time to provide some information for people who visit the site on a non-windows platform.

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On the other hand, Google has a wealth of information about Oddpost, much of which can be read in any browser on any platform.

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I didn't say "IE5W eclusivity is evil" about those guys. When I wrote that I no idea who they were, or even if they were guys. I still know little other that what I've learned from you right here, and what I learned a few minutes earlier from the site's source view.

FWIW, that view doesn't look like "two guys who have mastered DHTML like no one else on the planet." It looks like another big company — WebSideStory — doing something cool for one browser and not bothering to explain what they're doing to anybody else.

BTW,I didn't even see your pointer on your blog until a few minutes ago when I encountered that post in the #3 position on a Google search for Oddpost. What led me to www.oddpost.com at 1am this morning was an email suggesting I go looik. When I went there, I encountered a nearly pure mystery with damn few clues to help solve it — a state that persists even now.

Again, a little disclosure of helpful information would make sense here. When I go to the site with my browser on an OS X Mac using IE5 for that machine (also with Opera and OMNIweb, fwiw), I get told my browser won't work with whatever-this-is, and little more. I'd check with my Linux box, but it's down right now, along with everything else in my office, which is having rugs put in and walls being painted today (still amidst flies and the lingering stench'o'death). Not that it should matter.

And it should be obvious by now that I've had plenty of good things to say about plenty of stuff on plenty of platforms other than Linux and Unix, even though those are the platforms I get paid to cover.

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That's because they're the rarest of beasts and the most endangered of species in the software world -- developers who care about user interface and push the boundaries and inspire others to great UIs.

You kicked a sacred cow today Doc, and thanks for the chance to shed some light here. It's very important to me that developers who care about user experience get some help.

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Additionally, show me a mainstream large scale website which doesn't code to browser specifics. Every single one that I know of does. Even "open standards" aren't implemented in exactly the same fashion.

Scott

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WebSideStory makes HitBox, which is just a statistics/counter thing we use on the splash page (thus the reference to websidestory in the index source). It does a nice job of reporting the Who Came With What info. For example, today, 1.77% of our visitors were Opera users. FWIW, our server is a Debian distribution of Linux, running Apache and qmail, and our scripts are written in Python. Neither of us are e-vil, and we'll work on doing a better job of presenting more useful info to unsupported browsers! --Ethan

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However, there is flash plugin support for Linux, IRIX, Solaris, Mac Classic, Mac OS X, Win 3.1 through Win XP, even OS/2.

Not really a valid comparison for something that _only_ runs Win/IE...

Show me a mainstream large website that doesn't attempt to cater to _at least_ both windows and mac platforms _and_ that isn't under attack if they don't...

As has been said before, it's not so much that oddpost doesn't support anything but IE/Win, but that they thought so little of everyone else (or didn't think at all) to take 20 minutes or less to write an explanation on the website.

Just my 5 cents.

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For the most part, I don't think he needs to.

Since Unix geeks tend to code server-side, their code is usually cross-platform once it hits the browser. Why explain something, when it works for everybody?

I wonder how your post on April 4th makes any difference? Or do you think that everyone with a web browser reads your blog? ie; "shucks, I don't know what's going on here, I better check ScriptingNews to see if they explain it there..." ;-)

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Thanks for playing nicely! A great way to end this little discussion on an upbeat and positive note. Doc wants more info - Ethan supplies it - what could be simpler?

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As for catering to specific platforms, everybody doing the wrong thing doesn't make it right. I don't care if the Fortune 1000 all has different sites for every permutation of browser/HTML level/platform, they would be doing it wrong. The only right way to do it is to "vote with your code." Code to the specs and complain to the browser vendors when they don't support the spec.

Just my opinion...

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"When I went there, I encountered a nearly pure mystery with damn few clues to help solve it — a state that persists even now. "

Yes, that's part of the allure, made you curious didn't it? ;-)

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