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February 13, 2006
Non-universal forms
Non-universal forms: This is why I believe in Adobe's mission of providing a lightweight media/interactivity layer above the range of the world's machines... the link goes to a Washington Post article which may disappear, but here's the gist: "The new [US] 'Grants.gov' system, under development at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, aims to replace paper applications with electronic forms. It is being phased in at the National Institutes of Health, Department of Housing and Urban Development and other federal agencies. All 26 grant-giving agencies are supposed to have their application processes fully online by 2007. The problem: Although many U.S. scientists and others depend on graphics-friendly Macintosh computers, the software selected by the government is not Mac-compatible. And it is expected to remain so for at least a year. Last week, faced with evidence that the system will not be fully accessible to Mac users by this fall as promised, NIH quietly dropped its plan to switch to electronic applications for October's $600 million round of major R01 grants." Inappropriate use of platform-specific technology may be the "skip intro" of OS companies like Microsoft or Apple -- it's easy for an individual development group to say "works great for me!" and then not check in on the actual reactions of their audience. I don't know why the decisionmakers here didn't choose a more evolved technology like Acrobat and LiveCycle for their forms/documentation needs... looks like the decision flowed down to Grumman and then out to a subscontractor in Canada... anyway, as a society we're still uncovering damage from apps which require a certain operating system or browser to work. (On an unrelated note, one link that's hitting internal email today is CuteOverload.com... the diversity of the web is a constant surprise.... ;-)
Posted by John Dowdell at February 13, 2006 04:05 PM
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Comments
I wonder that myself. The new InfoPath lets you use a browser-based system even if you want to go with Microsoft centric stuff. Sounds like they hand-coded it to meet some sort of requirement.
Posted by: Robert Scoble at February 13, 2006 04:45 PM