Friday, December 08, 2006
Getting left behind
Today, I talked to a customer that we hadn't heard from in a while. Each time he calls, the problems can be simplified to one underlying issue: he insists on using a browser called Arachne, which I'd never heard of before talking to him. The browser's site boasts that
Hooray! It's fully compliant with the late 90s! For reference:
The browser is designed to be really basic. It doesn't include support for things like Javascript, which has been around since 1995 and has been common on web sites for at least half a dozen years. I would assume that the idea of the browser is mainly that it can be used on very old machines (the FAQ warns that the associated mail client "is simply not really usable without at least 4MB of memory", which is roughly 1/250th of the amount of memory in an average computer that you might buy today). Someone using that browser today might have an archaic computer, or they might have decided that using a browser without so many of the standard features on the Internet today is the best way to stay secure.
That last one is my guess with this guy, although I don't really know. He seems to get offended that some sites won't display for his browser, which is at least six generations behind. I don't know why, but most computer users, even very new ones, seem to have some appreciation of the fact that the technology and experience of using the net is evolving pretty quickly all the time. If you couldn't easily get free programs to surf the net, I might have some sympathy for this guy, but there are several well-known free browsers. If his computer can't handle one of them, well, that's unfortunate, but it's also the reality of being connected to the net. It's just not reasonable to expect the whole world to cater to your out-of-date preference.
* http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
Arachne is currently fullscreen graphical WWW browser which runs on DOS compatible operating systems. Version for POSIX-compliant systems like Linux is being developed.Arachne was designed by Arachne Labs. It supports subset of HTML/4.0 specification, including tables, frames, imagemaps, forms, and more. FTP and e-mail clients are incorporated.
The distribution package includes freeware PPP dialer, WAV player, etc. Utilities like MPEG video player, AVI/Quicktime/MPEG3 multimedia player or TELNET client can be very easily downloaded as "Arachne packages" - installation process is fully automatical.
Hooray! It's fully compliant with the late 90s! For reference:
This document specifies HTML 4.01, which is part of the HTML 4 line of specifications. The first version of HTML 4 was HTML 4.0 [HTML40], published on 18 December 1997 and revised 24 April 1998.*
The browser is designed to be really basic. It doesn't include support for things like Javascript, which has been around since 1995 and has been common on web sites for at least half a dozen years. I would assume that the idea of the browser is mainly that it can be used on very old machines (the FAQ warns that the associated mail client "is simply not really usable without at least 4MB of memory", which is roughly 1/250th of the amount of memory in an average computer that you might buy today). Someone using that browser today might have an archaic computer, or they might have decided that using a browser without so many of the standard features on the Internet today is the best way to stay secure.
That last one is my guess with this guy, although I don't really know. He seems to get offended that some sites won't display for his browser, which is at least six generations behind. I don't know why, but most computer users, even very new ones, seem to have some appreciation of the fact that the technology and experience of using the net is evolving pretty quickly all the time. If you couldn't easily get free programs to surf the net, I might have some sympathy for this guy, but there are several well-known free browsers. If his computer can't handle one of them, well, that's unfortunate, but it's also the reality of being connected to the net. It's just not reasonable to expect the whole world to cater to your out-of-date preference.
* http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
# posted by Terry @ 3:20 PM 
