RE: IE-only sites

I am working on the bank - my preferred machine at home is an iMac running
Mandrake 9.1, and I am currently fooling with browser; as far as I can tell,
dumping the conversation between browser and NatWest bank, there are no real
dependencies on the browser for the banking app to work - they use several
tricks to find out what you are really running though. More later.

The machine of course has one drawback - I don't have macromedia flash
player for it - Macromedia technical support bounce my emails to them
asking, pleading or demanding a binary for gnu/linux running on a ppc engine
(they have a multitude of binaries for most anything else ;-)

I'd welcome any suggestions about what I do with Siebel and their dependency
on the highly interactive client. There is about 1.7MB of activeX controls
that are downloaded for the client side functionality. We do have a limited
Citrix capability - the Citrix ICA client going into Siebel works really
well, but I can't always use that - its only there for home working users.

And yes, with the very impressive work on Wine, MOL and others - its clear
that given a properly documented API, you can emulate rather well and
achieve the goal of platform independence. I worked in graphics development
for a number of years, and learned from an early stage that Windows was
written as graphics device interface for Excel running on Intel engines.
Clearly there were publicly defined interfaces, and private ones (that Excel
actually used); its the undocumented calls and unexpected side-effects that
can trip up emulation of an API.

Nik

-----Original Message-----
From: annoyances-bounces-DzJonyRHso41Ayx8vbq1stBPR1lH4CV8@public.gmane.org
[mailto:annoyances-bounces-DzJonyRHso41Ayx8vbq1stBPR1lH4CV8@public.gmane.org]On Behalf Of Pablo Vieira
Sent: 24 November 2003 15:55
To: 'Seeking Linux annoyances for a book.'
Subject: RE: [Annoyances] IE-only sites


Hi Nik,

Are you inferring it is NOT possible to have other browsers talking to
IE-applications in a clean way?

Wouldn't you agree that an API can be emulated effectively taking away the
power from the owner?

Regards,

Pablo

> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: annoyances-bounces-DzJonyRHso41Ayx8vbq1stBPR1lH4CV8@public.gmane.org [mailto:annoyances-bounces@dee-
> annleblanc.com] En nombre de Nik Sargeant
> Enviado el: lunes, 24 de noviembre de 2003 12:04
> Para: [email protected]
> Asunto: RE: [Annoyances] IE-only sites
>
>
> Um ... my bank in the UK is one of the people who insist on IE to get into
> their interactive banking application. I have considered moving bank (but
> then I have been with them for 30 years) .. I have petitioned, written
> letters, emails, all to no avail .. and the other major embarrassment is
> my
> employer. I work for a rather large computer company; I work in a team of
> people responsible for looking after their huge call center
> support/opportunity management system running on Siebel. Unfortunately,
> the
> highly interactive Siebel client is, yup, you guessed it dependent on
> Internet Explorer (plus this version, this and that fixpack level). Hence
> the client platform I use for business at the moment really has to be
> M*crosoft. You have no idea - actually that is unfair; you may well have a
> very good idea - how much this pains me.
>
>
> Having been involved ( largely in vain) in many of the discussions between
> the evil empire and this certain large computer company about OS/2  (nee
> CPDOS) vs Windows vs AIX in the late Eighties, I know only too well that
> we
> brought all this on ourselves. He who owns the API, owns the industry.
> Open
> Software - and more importantly open standards give us the opportunity to
> put this right again.
>
> Nik
>
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>



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