Re:How about a unified alliance of websites refusing to supp...
by bmelton on Sunday June 24, 2012 @01:06AM
(#4152632)
More specifically, the 'nightmare' is likely less than 1 percent of their 'customers'.
Building a website allows for little in the way of excuses as to why you shouldn't be able to support almost every single user in every single browser.
Building a web application allows for a much greater variety of excuses. Writing modern code that allows for dynamic interaction and 'save as you type' type of functionality is extremely difficult to support for older browsers or browsers that don't do a very good job of conforming to web specifications.
You've mentioned previously that you aren't a 'developer', so I thought it merited mention. Simply put, it's a lot harder than you think.
If your app is in a competitive space, or one where 'cutting edge' is expected, it's an extremely easy decision to throw away less than 1% of your audience in favor of being able to iterate faster, release new features earlier than your competition, or dramatically increase the speed in which the other 99.7% of users interact with your application (and make them happier customers.)
I generally agree with the notion of 'supporting everybody you can', but having built 'new-school' applications, I understand that it is in fact very hard, and not always worth it.
Building a website allows for little in the way of excuses as to why you shouldn't be able to support almost every single user in every single browser.
Building a web application allows for a much greater variety of excuses. Writing modern code that allows for dynamic interaction and 'save as you type' type of functionality is extremely difficult to support for older browsers or browsers that don't do a very good job of conforming to web specifications.
You've mentioned previously that you aren't a 'developer', so I thought it merited mention. Simply put, it's a lot harder than you think.
If your app is in a competitive space, or one where 'cutting edge' is expected, it's an extremely easy decision to throw away less than 1% of your audience in favor of being able to iterate faster, release new features earlier than your competition, or dramatically increase the speed in which the other 99.7% of users interact with your application (and make them happier customers.)
I generally agree with the notion of 'supporting everybody you can', but having built 'new-school' applications, I understand that it is in fact very hard, and not always worth it.