Browser compatability, was: Bituah Leumi site: call them!

[Gadi Cohen]

I think ultimately what Gilboa is suggesting (below) is the way to go
(especially with government agencies and subsidaries); however in the
meantime I'd like to suggest something in the middle.  This is where I
think we've gone wrong until now and how to change it:

1) Problem:  We usually complain to tech support, who are usually
incompetent.  If they forward our complaints on to anyone, it will be to
the site developers, who use and know nothing but IE, and have no
motivation to do otherwise.

Solution:  We must target the company directors, with strong arguments
(below) that will convince them to take action, and ORDER the developers
to get their act together (pay them, make them uphold their contract, or
change companies).

2) Problem: Sometime we try get support for Linux, which is harder.
Solution: All we need is support for W3C, or at least non-IE specific code.

3) Problem: We accept the perception that we are a minority.
Solution: We're not!  As of March 2010, IE has only a 52% market
share!!  [1]

And here lies our compelling arguments:

a) If they're targeting people outside of Israel (including investors!),
they're excluding 900 million people :)  [2]
b) They're missing out on mobile phones, netbooks, tablets, tvs, etc
which are all emerging markets.
c) If they're only targetting Israel (where IE has higher use) they are
still falling behind their competitors.
d) Basically, the whole world (even Israel) is moving forwards, and
they're stuck in the past, losing current customers and not in a
position to attract new ones.

Analogies are great too.  Here's one I just thought of now.

"It's like telling your customers they can only do business with you if
they call you from a Nokia cell phone"

That's something anyone can understand.  Nokia was dominant.  They're
not anymore.  Everyone knows of the Iphone, Blackberry, etc and you can
remind them that none of these devices can access his/her website.

So, do they really not care that their entire business image (and
business potential) is affected simply because they have chosen to
overpay incompetent site developers?

etc, etc.

Comments welcome :)

References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
[2] http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Gadi

On 16/04/2010 14:06, Gilboa Davara wrote:
> We're long past the talking stage.
> IMHO, we (as in non-Window-using-community) need the following:
> - Someone with (a lot? of) free time to galvanize the efforts.
> - A hub. (Site, facebook, linked-in, etc)
> - Money. (I'm willing to pledge 1K nis for the effort)
> - A good attorney that handles supreme court cases.
>
> In theory, (and sadly enough, without the man power to push it forward,
> it'll remain a theory) the following steps should be taken:
>
> - Setup a site that will be used as a hub to collect funds and
> volunteers.
> - Locate a good attorney.
> - Select several high profile targets (gov.il comes to mind) and sue
> them for say, price of Windows * 5% of all computers in IL. This should
> get their attention.
> - Speaking of attention, make a lot of noise about it in the press. News
> papers usually dig under-dog-vs-government type of wars.
>
> I'd do it myself, but I'm over-worked as it is :(
>
> - Gilboa
>
>
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> Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il
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>
>   


-- 

Gadi Cohen aka Kinslayer <dragon at wastelands.net> www.wastelands.net
Freelance admin/coding/design HABONIM DROR linux/fantasy enthusiast
KeyID 0x93F26EF5: 256A 1FC7 AA2B 6A8F 1D9B 6A5A 4403 F34B 93F2 6EF5

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