My java teacher uses a hosting service for his website where he posts lecture slides in power point format and the homework assignments in Word format. Im a pretty intense linux user and I use Star Office 6.0 which is compatible with the word and powerpoint formats that he uses. Unfortunately his website will not open unless you are using Internet Explorer or Netscape. My mozilla is able to open the page fine, however I get forwarded to an odd page when using Opera, Konqueror or Galeon. Even when I am using Mozilla, Im not allowed to download the homework assignments. I guess it only works on IE computers. These problems have come to seriously annoy me since I can not begin work on the homework unless I print it out at the school's Windows 2000 based computer lab. I expected more from a teacher at a university.
Making websites that only work with specific browsers is idiotic. Konqueror, Galeon, and Opera all should be able to render 95% of websites just fine. I guess at this point I realized I was the only student who used linux primarily. This seems odd to me considering Im a computer science major, and usually programming students use linux more often.
What really sucks is that my teacher wants us to use a microsoft specific program for writing our programs in java. Im sure "Textpad" is just fine for Windows users, but I can use vi or emacs plus the java compiler from Sun to compile any java program in linux.
Im going against the normal flow of things in my class, but sometimes you have to make a stand to show others that everyone doesnt use MS, and that there are alternatives out there. I just really was dissappointed that a computer science teacher would be so MS specific in his course content. At least we arent using MS Visual Java.
If you use an alternative browser, check out his page at
http://jdean4.pageout.net then check it with IE or mozilla and you will see what I mean. Sorry to bitch guys, but sometimes it seems that us alternative OS users have no options.
