OHIO is NOT Macintosh friendly!!

Ever since the Democrats took control of the State of Ohio after the 2006 elections, strange things began to happen on official websites. Macintosh computers using the Safari browser could no longer access government documents. I first noticed this at the Department of Commerce website last year, when I had to switch to the PC and IE 6 to get my licensing information. Then, this year, while trying to access the tax forms, I got this:

Pretty cute, isn't it? Most of the text is missing. There is no way you can fill out that form. Even opening it in Acrobat 7.0.5, which they say is required, does not allow you fill out the form on-line, since the only way it will properly open is if you download the .pdf. Then, if you fill it out, you cannot file it on-line.

If the government said that you could only drive on the highway if you used a Ford product, people would scream that their rights were being violated. This is the same kind of thing -- government saying, "Use this commercial product or else."

At first I was going to say something about Bill Gates having bought all the Ohio Democrat politicians. Then I went to Apple's website and found that other people were having the same problems, some of them on Federal websites. It turns out that Apple adheres strictly to the published web standards for browsers. Microsoft does not (that was always a problem, because years ago, way back when IE first came out, MS tried to knock Netscape out of the market by deliberately breaking the rules). The Open Source people who are responsible for Firefox simply make sure that if a site breaks the rules, the browser can use the corrupt site anyway. Apple tends to stick as closely as possible to the standards since opening any little loopholes can let nasty unwanted intruders in; Safari has fewer viruses than Firefox which has fewer viruses than IE. Apple says it is not a conspiracy; it is simply laziness on the part of website developers who learned to code with IE and never bothered to think that standards mattered.

So I think it will be a real hoot in another year or so when all of a sudden, these IE-specific websites will no longer work. Yep, you heard that correctly. It seems that Billy Gates himself has made the pronouncement that the next upgrade of IE will stick strictly to the published web standards. There will be some howls of outrage when all those non-standard websites will have to be rewritten, but the power of the marketplace, with the growing number of people switching to Safari and Firefox, is forcing MS to change the way they do business. And, as has been the MS custom, if you don't like it, they will throw you under the train. And charge you for it in the bargain.