Danny B. wrote:
* the crossbrowser compatibility - I saw couple
scripts or styles
which operated in Gecko based browsers (Firefox & co.) as intended,
but in IE it was completely unusable. Since Gecko based browsers are
not proprietary software, this point doesn't cover these issues,
however participating on and/or using of WMF projects should also not
require use of any particular software. (Yes, opensource is free
available, but the common problem is eg. employees can't install
anything on their computers at work and having preset browser.)
We've always been committed to cross-browser compatibility; most big JS
code changes that pass through my desk get tested on several platforms
and several versions of several browsers, though not always totally
systematically.
Further, 'fancy' features using JavaScript etc are always optional
extras, never requirements for using the site.
I'm only aware of continuing problems with IE for Mac, which hasn't been
updated in several years; the JavaScript handling has gotten more and
more broken as time goes by. IE/Mac is pretty rare these days, though.
There shouldn't be any software issues with IE/Win except for the
occasional minor visual difference (IE 6.x and below with transparent
PNGs in particular). Any functional bugs should be brought to our
attention --
bugzilla.wikimedia.org is always open. :)
If you have compatibility issues with customized user scripts, bring
them to the attention to the authors of the custom scripts.
* the accessibility issue - (not necesarily software
issue, but
tightly related with previous item) since we declare being "open"
encyclopedia, we should take care about having pages accessible at
least against WCAG Single A and/or Section 508 guidelines.
I'd tend to say that's a separate issue; and it's far from trivial to
really define this stuff.
-- brion vibber (brion @
wikimedia.org)