>It depends on whether you see yourself as
>offering a privilege or merely a service. You
>can't dine in a 5 star restaurant if you aren't
>wearing a jacket and they won't let you onto the
>ski slopes if all you have is a tin tray.
The WWW is a much different world than real life, and I don't think your analogy holds up in this "world". As a webmaster, you should be as accomodating to your users as possible-- that means they should be able to enjoy your site regardless of whether they're surfing on a brand spankin' new PIII 800 Mhz power-house PC packed with all the latest goodies, with a T1 connection and the most up-to-date version of IE or Netscape.... or whether they're chugging along with a 14.4 modem, using a lynx browser on a toaster-oven that's been jury-rigged to act like a PC.
I know that you've made some very nice sites, Eileen, but I don't know much about your background-- whether you're purely a hobbyist or whether you actually work in this field. What I CAN tell you though, is that I make my living as a webmaster. In this business, the main objective seems fairly obvious to me: to draw as many visitors to your site as possible. More visitors = more hits. More hits = greater revenue. Seems simple enough to me. So why would you want to shut ANYONE out unless you absolutely have no alternative?
Besides the money-making aspect of it... I think it's just plain rude to force my users to use a certain browser to access my site. I want them to come to my site, but it's not up to me to tell them HOW to get there.
I don't know about you, but when I come across a site that denies me access because I'm not using a 4.0 browser, or I'm not java/javascript enabled, or I "need to download the SO-AND-SO plugin"... I simply skip it. It's not worth my time. The webmaster doesn't want to take the time and effort to accomodate me, so I won't take the time and effort required to get into their "5 star" site.
A skilled webmaster will find a way to make their site accessible by everyone while still including all the "goodies" and "extras" (javascript, etc.) for the "power users". These "extras" should provide shortcuts, easier ways of doing things, or they can just be fun little bonuses that don't take away from the functionality of the site if they can't be used/viewed/accessed.
The lone exception I can think of involves Secure Socket Layers. For security reasons, I can see SSL support with a certain minimum encrytion level being a REQUIREMENT for some sites (ie. e-commerce). In such cases, there's really no way to guarantee the same level of security with browsers that don't support SSL, so there may be no alternative than to deny access.
>If you want to go the the 'best' places you have to meet the requirements.
Again, this is the world wide web-- we're all equal here. We're all just a bunch of faceless cyber-names moseying around the "information super-highway". The idea that any of us are elite or privileged, or that any of the sites out there are "5 star" seems kinds of ridiculous to me... and a bit pompous and arrogant.
Anyhow, Eileen... please don't take this as a flame. I respect you as a poster here; we just appear to disagree on this particular issue. This is also getting getting off topic from the original post, so I apologize to everyone for the interruption.
