On Wed, 12 Jul 1995, Steven Osman wrote:
> 
> Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@ccs.neu.edu> writes...
> -> >>>>> "Lanzer" == Lanzer <deliu@unixg.ubc.ca> writes:
> ->
> -> Lanzer> Just like the Sasami Shrine, Please have a browser that Lanzer>
> -> supports HTML V3.0, which means you'll want Netscape 1.1, and Lanzer> Mosaic

> -> users will see virtually nothing. (sorry)
> ->
> -> Two problems with this:
> ->
> -> 1) HTML 3.0 is *NOT* an accepted standard, yet, so "requiring" it at this
> -> time is downright foolish. There is exactly *one* HTML 3.0 compliant browser

> -> out there, and that's Arena, and it's nothing more than a testbed for HTML
> -> 3.0 and not a finished product. Not to
> -> mention that it's only available for some Unix systems.
> ->
> -> 2) When you "require Netscape" you effectively say, "well, you suck 'cuz
> -> you're not using this really cool browser". HTML is supposed to be portable.

> -> You, the HTML author, can't know what my browser is capable of doing, other
> -> than complying with the agreed upon standard. That standard right now is
> -> HTML 2.0, and every browser out there right now can parse it.
> 
> I'm afraid I have to agree with you.  After all, the way the internet seems to
> work is that everyone shares a common language, and therefore, everyone can
> communicate with each other.  I sort of think of it as the internet bible, or
> "the way it is", the second you begin straying from the standards, you start
> leaving people out, and that's not entirely fair now, is it?

The problem with your theory is that people aren't being entirely left 
out.  People with Mosaic will still be able to see the text portions of 
the site, along with any gif graphics.  However, most of the graphics on 
the site are jpegs, so non-Netscape users will have to use external jpg 
viewers to look at those.  Less efficient, but certainly not 
exclusionary.

If you look at the Ryoko's shrine site, you would understand why he saids 
that Mosaic users would see virtually nothing.  This is because the site 
is setup sort of like an interactive click and choose thingie.  Mosaic 
users will see the text choices, but without the accompanying picture, it 
really doesn't make sense.

In any case, there really is no reason that anybody out there can't be
using Netscape.  Unless you have some personal reason against Netscape
Inc's policies or something, which some on this list evidently do, there
really aren't any barriers.  There are barriers to using Mosaic, though,
such as glacial slowness, frequent crashes, infrequent updates, lack of
support for many features used in many web sites, etc. The Netscape
browser is available free on the net, and can be legally used for free by
basically anyone.  This highly available browser is also the best,
fastest, best-featured browser out there, such that most of the best web
sites program support for its features.  If you want to surf the Web to
its fullest today, you'll need a $0.00 piece of software. How is that
exclusionary? 

I recommend that everybody check out the Sasami and Ryoko shrines using a 
Netscape 1.1 browser and say if they would like it any other way.  IMHO, 
these two sites are the best looking and most fun anime sites I've seen.

Collin K. Ong
collin@mcd.fm.intel.com (post reply header is incorrect)
[My opinions only]

P.S. Yes, Netscape is free-only to non-profit use, but I suspect most 
for-profit companies have or will have site licenses for it.  Most people 
that would access this site fall into one of these categories.