Oops: Phone Not Supported

The comments for Oops, browser not supported are a good read. A few quick highlights include:

• A reference to Yahoo’s graded browser support. This is great stuff, as explained in my fabulous graph below.
• A link to Reset Reloaded, something I definitely need to do for my own site. I keep running into margin and padding inconsistencies, for instance when embedding certain tags inside of thought bubble comments.

Now for the Graph

This highly technical graph shows why toolkits and libraries like YUI, GWT, Dojo, and others are inevitable:

I test my blog on my PC with two browsers: IE 7 and Firefox 2. I simply do not have the resources (time/money/desire/etc) to test on a variety of browsers and operating systems. But I do worry about it…

• What does my site look like on cell phones and PDAs?
• Is accessibility even remotely supported?
• What about Macs? Linux? Old browsers?

The graph shows a vertical dashed line. There comes a point where you have to support so many browser and device combinations that you simply cannot hand code a sophisticated site.

Old Story, New Rules

We’ve dealt with this issue for years and years and years. What makes it any different today than it was a few years ago?

• Devices, devices, devices - pretty soon an awful lot of people will be browsing your web site with phones, MP3 players, game consoles, and other gadgets. A world with 2 incompatible browsers is childs play compared to today’s reality.
• User expectations. You can’t just hand-code some XHTML-strict along with compliant CSS and expect great results. People expect AJAX, animations, WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop, mapping, etc. Good luck hand coding all that.

So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed the graph. I wonder how that 453 pixel wide PNG looks on your cell phone?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 11:07 pm and is filed under HTML and CSS. You can skip to the end and leave a response.