> until you realize that these companies have to pay people to actually make it work in a browser that's 10 years old

Text and images don't work in ten year old browsers?

> Their website is a product, and they can choose who to offer it to.

And, as I've said more than once, it's fine if their product only works in some browsers and can only be used by some people. (Except, you know, there's some laws you need to comply with.)

But the product part of the website is different from the sales part of the website. Why not make a sales website that degrades gracefully to text and images?

> This is like complaining that this android app won't work on your 10 year old dumbphone.

No. It's like complaining that a listing of software for smartphones is unreadable on anything but the very latest generation of smartphones. (Except it isn't because all analogies are awful.)

> Why should everyone have to pay money to make stuff work in outdated software

This isn't about screen reader software. This is about compliance with web standards for information that is an excellent candidate for standards compliance. Remember that I'm not talking about web apps or software here - I'm only talking about websites describing software, websites that give information to potential customers.

> Why make compromises and waste time when implementing a new feature because it might screw up the viewing experience in your decade old browser?

Because these are not apps that I'm talking about. It's information. Why would you take something simple like text and images and a bit of CSS and make it hard for people to use it on the device of their choice? Why do people make websites that can't be viewed on a mobile phone? What features do they absolutely need that can't be provided on a mobile phone? Usually, it appears to be a mistake they made.

> the viewing experience

FUCK the viewing experience. Seriously. My life has been transformed reading pages of plain text. My life hasn't been transformed by a really nice CSS border. I want to read information. I don't want some idiot designer to mess it around. Let designers do the hard work - give it a nice font, give it a nice clean layout, make it useful. (And this is where good CSS is important - it's hard to make things clean and minimal.) See this example of an error, from the only other tab I had open, Chrome on OSX Snow Leopard. Not an obscure browser.

(http://imgur.com/9Ts2b)

The link to, I think, the links to view // communications are obscured by the grey background to the menu bar and search box. (Notice also that the top line is partly dark grey while the second line is light grey, leading to a confusing mix of colours for menu items.)

> I don't go into a store expecting to be able to still buy heroin as my cough medicine of choice, either.

A weird analogy. Say you went into a store to ask about information for blood glucose testing meters. You ask the clerk for information. She shows you 4 machines. She gives you manufacturer leaflets, and prices, for 4 machines. But you notice there are 5 machines on the shelf.

"What about that one?" you ask.

"Oh that," she says, "that's the new Blood-o-matic-9001. It's a great machine. Do you have a computer with Windows 8 on you?"

"Well, er, no, I don't." you reply, wondering why she'd ask such a thing. You only want information about it.

"That's a shame," she says "we'll only give information about that machine to people using Windows 8. Come back when you have it and we'll give you information."

Can you see that the app (the meter) can be flash-bang-whizzy and can set limits on the use because that's what apps do, but that it's stupid to set limits on what is essentially a bit of text and graphics just because you wish to force users to "enjoy" the viewing experience of transitions and curved borders.

I guess, because you've mentioned it, that I strongly agree that people should not support broken browsers. But that's very different from not allowing websites to gracefully degrade. I apologise for not being clear enough to convey my point. Communicaing my meaning is something I need to work on.