WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

RE: IE only .gov site

for

From: Conyers, Dwayne
Date: Aug 12, 2005 11:12AM

Darrel Austin wrote:

> The USPTO is soliciting feedback on the idea
> of rolling out a new site that will only
> support IE initially.

Many moons ago, I was part of a team that built an intraweb for the VA.
This was IE specific with a Microsoft SQL backend and had heavy use of
ActiveX (including Microsoft Agent technology) and other IE-only code
that would never fly on a public web.

Given the closed and secure nature of the environment, we were able to
do some pretty amazing thin-client applications that were very user
friendly and secure. The fact that it was a closed network was
reassuring, and we had fun writing applications that would be too
dangerous in the wide open spaces.

Reading the USPTO announcement, it seems that there is little reasonable
value in what they are proposing, but that is only my opinion... I could
be wrong.


---
Dwacon
www.dwacon.com