Feeling like a 2nd class citizen

[Dotan Cohen]

On 28/11/2007, Sylviane et Perry White <spwhite at freesurf.ch> wrote:
> Dotan wrote:
> > Why not adapt a parallel strategy and write to those responsible for
> > the websites in question? I have found that most websites, large and
> > small, are in fact willing to make the necessary changes once enough
> > people ask them to.
> I would consider that strategy If I were certain the problem comes from them
> and not from me, but I'm way to ignorant.

Then you can contact me off list and I'll check it out. I used to run
http://IE-Only.com which was a resource for dealing with sites that
required IE. I have contacted hundreds of webmasters and have seen
lots of change.

> For example when I install some codecs and then Firefox is able to display a
> video but not Konq, can I blame the website or did I just fail to make Konq
> aware of this codec?

Codec for video content? I would not blame the website. A good place
to start checking for who's to blame is at the W3C's Markup Validation
Service:
http://validator.w3.org/

It's not 100%, but it is a great start.

> Another example is when a site appears to have different codings for the
> "background" page and some text it displays in an "inner window".
> By changing the coding I can get the correct representation of the french
> accentuated characters on the outer or inner parts, but not both together.
> (Now I am sorry I missed the opportunity to mark that link and look it up
> under M$)

In English it's called the "encoding" not "coding". Yes, you can blame
the webpage for that. They are most likely using a Microsoft encoding
of the CP variety. I have much experience in this as well, as I run
the Hebrew-language http://gibberish.co.il which translates wrongly
encoded text. Write to the webmaster in these cases and request that
they use UTF-8 in all places. UTF-8 will never cause gibberish
problems like you mention.

Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?