[cw-discuss] (no subject)

[Jeremy White]

>> Further, I have a moral issue with pushing IE; that is, I feel
>> strongly that any web site designer that makes a web site that doesn't
>> work in Firefox (at least) should be taken out and shot, and I don't
>> care to reduce the pressure on web site designers one iota.
> 
> 
> While certainly true, I question how you could feel this way while 
> developing and pushing a product that essentially does the exact same 
> thing for everything else? Why isn't allowing Mac and Linux users to 
> run any Windows software at all a moral failing as well? Crossover 
> itself is a very grey thing if you ask me, but it is useful, and IE6 
> would be useful too.

Sure; that's a fair counter point - it is, after all, a dirty job
we do :-/.

But surely you can agree that no one should use IE on a Mac
unless they have no other choice, and that even if a web site
will work only with IE that they should complain bitterly
to the web site owner.

I used to use Travelocity; I switched to Orbitz when they
stopped supporting Firefox on Linux, for example.

But just so we're clear - we will improve IE support; Rob has
already committed a patch which fixes one nasty bug, and we're
actively persuing other issues.  We do listen, regardless
of my pontifications on what 'should' happen.

I will admit that our initial sampling of Mac users didn't
suggest that IE was such a thorn; we were caught a bit off
guard by the demand.

However, the other thing that's important to understand is that
most people aren't really talking about Internet Explorer.

Often, people want IE because they need to run the
embedded Windows Media Player, or because they need to run
the Siebel application suite.  Those applications are big and
hairy applications in their own right - they just happen to be
wrapped in IE.  Hence, the task of supporting IE is really
'support IE and every ActiveX or COM component ever built' - and
that task is not a quick or simple one.

Cheers,

Jeremy