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RE: IE only .gov site

for

From: Hoffman, Allen
Date: Aug 15, 2005 7:40AM

I think an IE-only public facing site might fly on grounds that other
alternatives may not fit into current available deployment strategies
and resources. For example, if a more open site to accomplish the same
tasks were to be cost prohibitive within the available resources of the
USPTO, then maybe this is reasonable. I am skeptical that multi-browser
apps can't be produced however. It doesn't logically flow for me on
technical merit that piloting a single browser system is a good strategy
for piloting--as the "fixing" of the pilot may be prohibitive due to
constraints placed by excluding the multi-browser aspects in the
beginning. If a technical framework is established that only requires
minor add-ons to address other browsers later in the pilot, maybe, but
this would need to be clearly established as the development
methodology. Don't lock in, or lock-out would be my approach to such an
effort. Understanding what portion of the audience might be excluded
from this portion of a pilot would also be important to document, as
that portion might just have the key input needed for success.







-----Original Message-----
From: Conyers, Dwayne [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 11:29 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: RE: [WebAIM] IE only .gov site

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.


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Dwacon
www.dwacon.com