OK, I’ll stipulate that I am in a massive bad mood (iced driveway late video phone line in office dead and probably more), but I still think that this rant delivered as a footnote on a discussion of whether browser sniffing is a good or bad thing is just a freaking riot.
There’s plenty of “we need to deploy technology X, which only works in MSIE6/Win at 1024x768 on a Dell computer with a flatscreen 17” monitor, a colour depth of 32million and a colour temperature thingy of 9300k, after being freshly degaused and blessed by a Catholic priest, while the memory of chanting at a tabby cat is fresh in the user’s mind.” But the reason is usually /not/ that technology X is vital, but rather that technology X is some stupid, ill-advised abomination concocted of so much unnecessary small text, JavaScript and Flash to the point where the average user has an epileptic fit and dials Jakob Nielsen’s phone number involuntarily. Ahem. Issues… many issues…