Wherein I question Google developer's competence.

[vakkotaur]

Like a good many people, I have a Gmail account. Or two (as ACME has one). And I don't care for the default view which is the typical Windows-Mac white background. The good thing is that a while back Google introduced the ability to theme the Gmail site. The bad thing is that they somehow managed to code it so poorly that it's browser dependent rather than ability dependent. The current Big Three browsers are IE, Firefox, and Safari. Those, and Google's own Chrome thing (which is Windows only anyway) are all that is supported. From my point of view, this sucks. I use Opera. I prefer it over every other browser I've tried, and yes I have tried Firefox. It's okkay for occasional use, but I have no intentions of switching to it. Thus my use of Gmail is occasional. I like Opera more than I like Gmail. Opera wins. And Gmail shouldn't even need to be browser-dependent for what is really just a set of color changes. How incompetent are the Gmail developers, anyway?

Comments

[viergacht.livejournal.com]

That's rather obnoxious, especially for something so simple. I hate feeling I'm being unsubtly forced to use programs I don't want to.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

I work around this by using gmail IMAP or POP to fetch the mail, sending and receiving on a genuine mail client. I must do this to make mobile devices play well, as mobile web browsers suck more than the desktop ones do.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I do have things set up so I can use a local client fore my own account, but I keep everything on the server as that is somewhat the point. For the ACME account, I just log in and check it from time to time. So far it's just has spam (I screwed up and had it screen-scrapable and screen-scraped it was - but it demonstrates how good Google's spam filtering is if nothing else) and my own test messages.

I log into both accounts at times to check things over. I'm not always convinced that I get notification of things and like to double check.

[thecanuckguy.livejournal.com]

Stupid, yes; incompetent, possibly; common, absolutely. A vast majority of sites I visit are designed for one browser (IE usually), I'm sure you remember all those 90s webpages with the "Best displayed on IE" buttons - thankfully the buttons are gone, but the sentiment remains.

I have IE (about 6 versions), Firefox (my default), Netscape, Opera, and Safari all installed on my system, for website testing purposes (I'd have Chrome too, but it was introduced after I decided to close the business - or at least the obligatory several months waiting period for new technology passed after the decision.) I always make sure if it displays on Firefox that it can display on all others, including Opera. (Maybe not Netscape so much anymore, I don't know if that's still used at all ... ) I remember one client I had where he showed me a site that he wanted to get ideas for his to look like from, and I foolishly pointed out that I could make it better because on my Firefox system the page was not showing right at all (not lined up graphics, text on top of other text, etc.) and I would make it look better no matter what browser it's on. He then went into a rant on how he doesn't care how it looks on some "two bit browser", *his* clients use Internet Explorer, and that's the browser it should appear right on. If he wasn't a good friend as well (and we weren't talking on the phone instead of in person) I would have punched him.

The feeling is all too prevalent - most sites are meant to be displayed on IE or IE and FF, I'm surprised this is the first roadblock you've mentioned for Opera.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I'm surprised that more web developers don't include Opera in their testing. It's not exactly an obscure browser. It probably has a lot to do with laziness on the part of most of them. Google of all developers should've known about Opera; there has been various noise to make gmail work with it since gmail debuted in 2004.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I didn't get a Gmail account for some time because Gmail simply didn't work with Opera for quite a while. But then there are things like Chrome which is Windows-only, so that sort of nonsense doesn't surprise me too much. Google was very clueful about the search engine page, but evidently that cluefulness doesn't extend to their other projects.

It's not just Gmail, either. The Google tools things sound interesting but I have yet to see (and I did go looking for) a simple explanation of what they are and why I'd want them my machine. I found a lot of "How do I install..." stuff and stuff that was little more than ad-copy that assured me it was wonderful and I needed it. But it just put me off as it was too much like an overbearing used car salesman. All it lacked was a badly patterned suit that should cause the wearer polyester poisoning.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I really liked the "Any damn browser" campaign in response to that sort of nonsense. And I don't run into all that much IE-only stuff, though I still encounter some of that. I suspect the increasing awareness and therefore use of Firefox if nothing else has helped deal with some of that silliness. That Microsoft withdrew IE for Mac and left the field to Safari (and others) might also have helped.

The IE-only thing really bewilders me in cases like you mention. This guy would not, I expect, run a business where he randomly kicked customers out of his store or didn't let every n-th person in. Yet he's fine doing the equivalent on-line. I'm sure his competitors thank him for driving business their way. But I doubt many customers have bother to tell him why their money went elsewhere, so he remains ignorant.

Browser-specific design is if not censorship, its something rather close. And the saying, "The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." has considerable truth to it.

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

It boils down to IE's prevalence, which of course comes from its being tied to the Windows monopoly. To Joe Average, the kind of person who refers to hard disk space as "memory", IE is "the Internet", and the notion of web standards is unknown. If a web site doesn't display as expected, he assumes it's the web site that's broken, not IE.

Even IE 8 lags seriously in standard conformance--and as long as IE is in widespread use, that's to Microsoft's advantage, because it encourages IE-specific web pages. (Recall that until there was a huge outcry from web site designers, IE 8 was going to default to acting like IE 7 in a way that meant that to get standard conforming behavior, you had to add something nonstandard.) For lazy, incompetent, or harried web designers it's the easy way out.

I kind of like the web sites that detect IE and send you to a page that tells you what a POS IE is and that you should use a different browser.