Posted by jake on 08/29/05 13:02

In message <Pine.WNT.4.63.0508282228170.320@ZORIN>, Alan J. Flavell
<flavell@physics.gla.ac.uk> writes
>
>On Sun, 28 Aug 2005, jake wrote:
>
>> In message <Pine.WNT.4.63.0508281109170.1992@ZORIN>, Alan J. Flavell
>> <flavell@physics.gla.ac.uk> writes
>> >
>> > And it sure isn't going to work with w3m, emacs-w3, lynx. Nor google nor
>> > any other search engines, either.
>>
>> Maybe it's just as well that it will work for the 90% of the Web population
>> using IE ;-)
>
>I don't know where you got your figures from, but the proportion of people
>who regard MSIE as a web browser seems to be falling.

There's various figures bandied around on the Web, but most of these
seem to run in the range upwards of 85%.

Although no longer in the 'Web business' myself, I do contribute the
occasional page to a local organisation and like to monitor the visitor
statistics.

According to the stats, something like 98% of the (random) visitors to
the site use some release of IE. Assuming that some of the stats reflect
other browsers masquerading as IE, I suspect that '90% of genuine IE
users' is not an exaggerated figure.

>(I might add that
>MSIE deliberately flouts several mandatory requirements of the
>interworking specifications and thereby disqualifies itself as a web
>browser in the technical sense, but here we're probably discussing user
>beliefs rather than theoretical principles.)

Quite so.

>
>> > Which could be terribly misleading, if the web page
>> > was relying on it, rather than just using it for optional decoration.
>>
>> The browser will simply fall back on the default font(s) if it
>>doesn't support
>> font embedding. So I'm not quite sure I see a problem here.
>
>The problem is when authors use the technique to present some custom
>glyph, rather than merely a cosmetic variation. I'm sorry if I hadn't
>made that distinction clear.

That's fine. I take your point.

>> It's just presenting text in a preferred font;
>
>If that's all that it does, and regular fonts are likely to cover the
>needed character repertoire too, then you're OK, and my concerns are
>ill-founded, indeed. I'm sorry if you felt we were arguing at cross-
>purposes.


regards.

--
Jake
(jake@gododdin.demon.co.uk .... just a spam trap.)

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