Korean Job Discussion Forums

[superacidjax]

I finally figured it out! I've been trying to figure out why certain Korean websites (the Sogang Online Korean Course for one) don't work properly in non- IE environments. It isn't because the sites were "designed" for IE, it's because the web programmer used obsolete web technology.

There has been a bit of a discussion on Dave's about why Korean websites seem to be designed for Internet Explorer. Some have said that Internet Explorer represents 99% of all browsers in Korea so it makes sense to design for IE. I argued that browser-specific designing is a sign of bad design. Rather than recreate that argument here, I wanted to let people know WHY certain sites don't work in non-IE environments, specifically on Macs.. It isn't by conscious decision by designers, it's simply because some web designers' tools are outdated. The result of this is that a user must use IE; it isn't that IE is preferred by the designer it's just that the tools available make sites that only IE can properly execute.

Active Server Pages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Server_Pages) a long obsolete web programming technology is the reason for the crap-pages common in Korea. With the Sogang Online Korean site specifically, ASP is what keeps the page from loading properly on a Mac. Interestingly, it also keeps it from running well on many Windows machines too. It's an obsolete technology that, for some reason, a few Korean programmers continue to use.

I'm still trying to find if there is a plug-in or some kind of workaround to make ASP pages work on a Mac, but if anyone has any suggestions, I could sure use the help!