As more and more services are made available over the Web, browser standards have advanced. This includes new versions of the HTML standard, proprietary HTML extensions that ony work in certain browsers, proprietary plug-ins such as Flash that only work on certain platforms, and new standards, such as XHTML and CSS. This creates problems for:
- information producers who need to support an increasing number of browsers and multiple versions of the same browser
- information consumers, especially those using older browsers or minority platforms such as Mac OS and Linux, who find sites are inaccessible
The SSC e-Government Unit Web Guidelines offer an excellent guide to good practice in this area. It is likely that these guidelines will become mandatory for all government agencies in future.
An Architectural Framework can help the sector deal with this issue in a number of ways. Options include:
- set a timetable for phasing out older browsers, such as Netscape 4 and 6, and Internet Explorer 4 and 5.0, and operating systems, such as Win3x, win9x, and Mac OS 8 and earlier, so institutions can plan their ICT expenditure accordingly
- adopt a moving baseline, or a moving (say) four year window for support and testing against operating system, browsers, and standards, and rely on standards based technology to degrade gracefully for older systems and technologies
- adopt a widely-used browser platform — Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows — as the sector standard, and those who use a different platform do so at their own risk
- use an open source (free) standards based browser — Mozilla — that supports a diversity of operating systems and hardware as the sector standard
- set standards for web site browser testing based on web standards such as Ecmascript, CSS, XHTML, DOM, and accessibility — eg if it works in Opera, Safari, Mozilla, and iCab, it probably works in any browser
For example, this wiki site works with any browser. However, it offers Macron Support (such as in Māori) using Unicode, which older operating systems don’t support.
Access
Consumers may access services though channels of varying capabilitites and capacities, and may themselves have varying abilities.
- Need to support access by anyone regardless of disability. (See for example Bobby and webaim).
- The Information Systems Strategy lists four principles that will shape IS direction.
- Principle #2 “facilitate secure, seamless and streamlined access to the sector’s information through a choice of channels” (emphasis added) (see also 2.3.3)
- In 3.1.3 people connect their various digital devices [to a digital hub], implying that support for less capable devices must be available (eg via XML and XSLT).
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