Just noticed that the gang over @ Bungee Labs updated their site design, and couldn’t help but be inspired by the following graphic that greeted me upon my arrival,
Now *THAT’S* how to effectively tell your story in less words than exist in one of my average sentences. Nicely done, Bungee!
This is what greeted me:
You've reached a Bungee-powered application. To view this application, please use one of the following supported browsers:
Firefox Version 1.5 or higher. Get it here
Safari Webkit. Get it here
Internet Explorer 6.0 or greater. Get it here
Not nicely done at all, imo.
@Asbjørn,
IIRC, you're an Opera lover just like me, correct? If yes, rest assured that I have brought this concern up with the powers that be @ Bungee Labs in hopes they will find ways to support Opera sooner rather than later. The funny thing is, as you and I both know, is that as far as standards are concerned, Opera is the only browser you can rely on to be the most correct as far as the interpretation of any given spec. Unfortunately it's market dominance that trumps correctness.
With the above in mind, I think it's about time I tried to make some back channel magic happen, as there isn't a whole lot of work that would need to be done to make Bungee run on Opera, the result of which would include not only providing support for the Opera lovers of the world, but a more standards compliant code base of which will benefit them as the other browser manufacturers continue forward in their quest to improve their support for standards.
The problem is the "block by default" stance developers are taking. I don't have any problem with web developers not officially supporting any particular browser, be it Opera, Konqueror or LINKS; they don't even need to know that any such browser exists for what I care.
What bugs me is that they by default close the door for anyone who doesn't match the very narrow set of user agent strings they have hard coded into their applications. Should there suddenly emerge a fully RFC2616 + RFC2617 + HTML4.01 + CSS2.1 + DOM2 + ECMA 262 compliant browser no one has ever heard about, why on earth shouldn't it get access to the web site?
Sure, you can spit out warning messages that "The browser you're using is unfamiliar to us and we can therefore not guarantee that this website will work flawlessly", but blocking access is such a 1997 and completely backward thing to do. If you really need to check for browser capabilities, then ... check for god damn browser capabilities! The user agent string doesn't really tell you squat anyhoo.
@Asbjørn,
>> Sure, you can spit out warning messages that "The browser you're using is unfamiliar to us and we can therefore not guarantee that this website will work flawlessly", but blocking access is such a 1997 and completely backward thing to do. If you really need to check for browser capabilities, then ... check for god damn browser capabilities! The user agent string doesn't really tell you squat anyhoo.