Patrick’s Rants

I tried to send the following feedback on the Coconino County GIS web site:

I recently attempted to use the beta version of GIS maps and discovered that despite the fact that Firefox is nearing a 20% market share this government site is not ready to serve me or the other users of web browsers other than Internet Explorer. I have used the existing site with Firefox with no problems. I, as many Firefox users, feel that Internet Explorer is an inferior browser that leaves users exposed to malicious programmers whereas Firefox allows users to install extensions and add-ons (such as NoScript) to protect themselves from mass attacks that turn ordinary web sites into malicious hosts.

I was further frustrated to find that although there is a request for feedback on the beta, there is no direct link from the map page to the feedback form. Instead I had to directly enter the coconino.az.gov/gis.aspx address into my browser in order to find the feedback form; there does not appear to be a direct link back to the department web pages from within the map-gis.coconino.az.gov (I tend to directly enter this address in my browser)

I would appreciate the courtesy of a reply to my email address included above.

Of course I probably won’t get a reply, instead it doesn’t appear that the email even got sent. It’s some bogus javascript that didn’t seem to perform the actions in the function when I clicked the Send button.
It’s frustrating when the agencies that are tasked with providing services to citizens choose to support a convicted monopolist. Microsoft is struggling to maintain its market position by forcing through an ISO vote attempting to create a new document standard being called OOXML (Office Open XML) (which is becoming increasingly contested by the member nations) a 6000 page specification that does nothing to make Microsoft Office any more open.

It’s time for our local government to focus on platform neutral implementations of existing standards instead of relying on proprietary extensions and broken features in support of a company whose only goal is to try to maintain its grip on its failing monopoly. If Microsoft is still considered a monopoly then part of its punishment should be that the government does not support its ongoing business model. If Microsoft is not to be considered a monopoly then the government should rightly support the growing number of users who use something other than Microsoft and Internet Explorer.