[ Thanks to mike for this link.
]
“A large part of what I do in my spare time involves running a
non-profit Web (and e-mail, among other services) hosting provider
called The Web Union. Aside from the lack of a profit motive, TWU
is a relatively unremarkable hosting provider as far as user base
goes. This means, of course, that I host a few Mac OS users, a
sprinkling of Unix users, and vast legions of Windows users.
Hundreds of them. Most of them use IE to get to the site, and
that’s alright with me. I certainly make every effort to ensure
that the TWU pages, as well as my own personal site, look just as
nice in IE as in Netscape (or Lynx). In fact, things were going
just fine in this arena until recent events prompted me to take
action.”
“A few months after my users started peppering their sites with
pro-IE buttons, though, I began to notice a far more disturbing
trend. A small but growing number of my users’ sites were
completely unviewable in my browser. By this, I don’t mean “ugly”–
I mean broken. Some of them would display as blank pages in my
browser, but would work fine when I would start up IE for Windows
in an emulator … Others displayed (poorly), but could not be
navigated. …but only when viewed outside of IE. In short, a
growing number of my users’ sites were unviewable to me. Not only
could I not see, for purposes of personal curiousity, what sorts of
uses my server (which I pay for out of my own pocket) was being put
to, but I couldn’t even patrol the site for violations of TWU’s few
and simple rules!”
“Slowly, surely, without anyone noticing, the Web is bieng
transformed right under the world’s collective noses. It is being
transformed from its initial state– where pretty much any site
would work pretty much okay in pretty much any browser, running on
pretty much any OS– to a new state, perhaps best named “Microsoft
World Wide Web 1.0 for Windows.” The concept that Web sites
can (and should!) be made to work properly in multiple browsing
environments (browsers, OSes, even font loads!) is slowly being
degraded to the point where many users don’t even know that it
exists; when it is introduced to them, their reaction is, as often
as not, apathy. What’s most disturbing about the new trends in Web
design is that the devolution of the Web from a platform-neutral
medium to a platform-specific medium hasn’t been prompted by
corporate bribery, meaningful technological incentives or intrusive
government regulations. It’s been prompted by the collective apathy
of tens of thousands of Web developers, and the collective
ignorance of millions of Web users.”