Anti-HTML Rant

mark@unicorn.com
Wed, 11 Mar 1998 03:54:13 -0800 (PST)


Actually, I'd just like to add that in the last few months I've come to the
conclusion that the majority of commercial Web sites are cack produced by
people who care more about flash graphics than assisting their customers, and
who don't even realise how much money they're losing in the process.

For example, I just followed a link to a web-site for a film magazine; only
to reach a page saying 'Sorry, but your browser doesn't meet our requirements,
click here to download Internet Explorer'.

Now I don't want Internet Explorer, I don't care what *their* requirements
are. They are the ones who are supposed to be selling *me* something, but
they block me out of their site so that they can include some dumb Java
animated graphics. Do they have a clue?

Another example: a couple of days ago I was searching the Web for a place
to buy a copy of Adobe Premiere; according to the Adobe site, a $750 product.
I went to a site that I've bought from before, to check out their prices. I
clicked on the button, but it didn't work because they've replaced their old
CGI scripts with Javascript, and I have all that cack disabled because of
the security holes.

They lost a $750 order by trying to force their customers to do what the
company want them to do, rather than catering to all of us.

Another example: the numerous web sites where people have decided that
HTML text is too low-tech and use images for all their buttons (or worse,
all their content!) with no ALT tags. I don't even have image download
enabled because it's too damn slow on many sites... again, I go elsewhere
to a site that's not so pretty but chooses to help me.

No wonder Internet commerce is not the cash cow people expected...

Mark