Re: [MACCAWS] browsers? No, user agents.

MJ Ray wrote:
> Chris Kaminski <[email protected]> wrote:
>  > technically aren't people viewing Web
>  > pages on a PDA or phone also using a browser?  [...] 
> Does www4mail count as a browser?  
> I suspect "user agent" is the right thing to use, for that and avoiding the
> "browser wars" turn-off.

As far as phone/PDA/e-mail/[Insert device of your choice here] goes I'd 
say the users perception of what they are using is more important. I 
susupect most users don't think of themselves as using a browser. They 
are simply accessing the net on their phone/pda/webtv, the fact that 
there is a peice of software running which can be called a browser is 
irrelevant to them, they are simply interacting with the device.

I'd extend this even to pc's, how many users think of the web as 'explorer'?

I agree that avoiding jargon where possible is a good thing, but I'd 
also suggest that a little bit of jargon is actually attractive, it can 
make people feel a little bit smarter if they pick these terms up. One 
or two jargon terms, clearly explained, can't be that much of a problem 
for the vkit can it?

I'd use the term User Agent, it re-enforces the idea that people are 
accessing the net on more than just pc's, and helps us to put across the 
idea that this will increasingly be so in the future and that the way to 
deal with this is to build standards based sites/applications.

In a sense we'll be attaching a whole concept to the term User Agent - 
the idea that there are not just one or two 'browsers' out there but a 
whole host of 'User Agents' which need to be  catered for. For many 
people that vkit is aimed at we'll be introducing a whole lot of new 
ideas, giving them catchy 007 style names to associate these ideas with 
is no bad thing IMO.

Note: My apologies if I've just rehashed what everyone else has already 
said, I'm just come back from a weekend away and went though my mail 
backlog in a sleep deprived state!

Adrian