Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Amaya is the W3Cs browser and editor. It of course is a GREAT tool for developing and testing websites because it ADHERES to all the standards in a strict manner. Amaya 6.3 was just released.

There has been much ado lately about web usability and websites being "obsolete" because they only work in X browsers, etc.

In ALL of that discussion generally NOBODY gets the point. USE STANDARDS AND FORGET WHAT BROWSER ANYONE IS USING. Write you pages in VALID XHTML or HTML 4.01, etc, use VALID CSS and move on with life. Its NOT COMPLICATED. Utilize a STANDARD and then your usage is anything that supports that standard. It cane be done, in the REAL world (which is oft quoted in these discussions) if you use XHTML 1.0 and CSS then ALL BROWSERS 3x and up (including Netscape and IE 6 and 7) will work fine. Not only that but all robots will work, all text browsers will work, WebTV will work, etc.

When you use ANY CLIENT SIDE ANYTHING you cripple your site and make it less usable. That means if you use Javascript, Flash, Java Applets, etc. All are NOT A GOOD IDEA to use unless you UNDERSTAND AND ACCEPT that you have implemented those items and they are CLIENT side and they MAY NOT WORK (the site should still work without Javascript, without flash, without applets, etc, if the site DOES NOT WORK without a client side piece then it is POORLY DESIGNED.) Client side items MAY NOT WORK. It doesnt sound complicated but virtually nobody gets it. Even people who USE IE TURN OFF JAVASCRIPT a lot of the time. If your menus are Javascript, or you have SELECT drop down without a "go" button because you submit the form with Javascript, then either you are a moron, or you understand your site WONT WORK AT ALL in many situations and you are ok with that. Sure client side items can add a lot of great stuff to a website, but you must always accept that they wont work all the time and detect and provide backup to CONTENT or you are missing the point.

Also the use of frames and javascript has many other bad side effects such as causing search engine robots to turn around and leave. Use standards, understand why, if your site works in Amaya, your site works, if it doesnt it doesnt work, period.   http://www.w3.org/Amaya/