While we’re on the subject of Factiva…

November 6th, 2005 Stewart Posted in Uncategorized |

Factiva Begins Support for Firefox and Safari Browsers

This one had slipped past me. While I applaud the effort of Dow Jones to keep up with technology, it says something about their corporate mentality and lack of insight that their pages weren’t standards-compliant all along. I’m certain their coders thought the browser wars were long over and that IE was going to be the only browser anyone will ever use. (Many pundits now feel the same way about Google as a search engine. If the internet has taught us anything, it’s that change is the only constant. I guarantee that in ten years, we’ll be saying “Google-who?” the same way we reference Infoseek, Looksmart or even Yahoo today.)

Libraries simply have to become more progressive in pursuing standards-compliance among our vendors. I see nothing wrong with libraries suspending contracts or refusing to pay for resources that cannot be unilaterally accessed with any standards-compliant browser or reader. Not only does it force a response by otherwise sluggish and overcompensated database vendors, but it also makes this issue much more public.