[Novalug] IE-only websites [ was Walmart again selling Linux PC...]

[Theodore Ruegsegger]

Mike wrote:
> Have you checked out IEs4Linux yet?  I've found it invaluable for,
> at the very least, testing new sites.  It installs & runs IE5/5.5/6
> under Wine.  When last I checked, IE7 was still being worked on.

Someone demonstrated that you can even run "popular" Windows viruses
under Wine, but why would I want to? I'm kidding, of course, since
you're right about testing web sites for IE compatibility. As it
happens, my own web sites are kinda vanilla and rarely use fancy
features, but the browsers certainly have different interpretations of
CSS, Javascript, and how to render images (I'm thinking PNG
transparency and SVG).

> I've also discovered that a LOT of sites that "only work with IEx"
> work amazingly well in Konqueror if you tell it to lie in the
> User-Agent string (after I give up trying to get Opera to work).
> All sorts of ASP.net "features" that seem broken in FF/O/K all
> amazingly start working when the site thinks you're using IE but
> aren't.

Funny, I've found that, for the most part, I can live quite happily
without sites that "only work with IEx". An exception is certain
internal company services that I have to use, like getting my paystubs
or adjusting my 401K. But such sites on the general Internet generally
have a content at the same level of sophistication as their web
code... :P

Kidding aside, I wouldn't trust, for example, a bank that hired
FrontPage-monkeys to code, say, a bill-payment service.

Ted