What Year Is It: 1998?!

Ran into this site/message today trying to watch the end of a Saving Grace episode which inadvertently got cut off on our TiVo. This kind of inconsistency/viewability frustrates me both as a user and as a web developer. Here I am, going to the network’s official site to watch their show instead of downloading it illegally off bittorrent, and they’re punishing me because I don’t use the browser (or operating system) they think I should. Idiotic!

In the rush of the Internet rise, late 90s, it was common to find this sort of thing. After all, it was the height of the famed browser war (Internet Explorer vs Netscape).

Designing web sites was a pain back then. You had to take into account that what you were programming was going to be displayed differently depending on what browser people were viewing it on.

It wasn’t uncommon to have such lines as “This site best viewed on Internet Explorer 4+ on an 800 x 600 screen.”

Thankfully most of those days are long gone. Web standards have helped programmers and developers build one site that looks great across the board (except for a few minor tweeks). Well, at least better than they used to (I still have to battle IE when I’m developing a site as it refuses to render code the way it should and the way every other browser does).

But, like I said, that was a decade ago!

Those of you wanting to reach people via the web - the mantra nowadays is “give them what they want, how they want it, when they want it, and where they want it.” Not “give them what you want, how you want to give it to them, only where you feel secure giving it, and punish them for not fitting into your pre-determined box.

Posted 08.02.2008

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