Dear DAP Penang Webmaster,
Firstly, as one of your strong state you are governing as at today, your website is, in my honest opinion, totally inedequate. Apart from a few photographs, a few YouTube videos, and some online polls, it is essentially only a blog, with a lot of the content originating from blogs of other Penang DAP leaders. Honestly, if you want to be a blog aggregator, you would be better off utilising a “planet” software like this, this or this. In fact, you should implement a Planet Penang DAP to aggregate all the blogs from the different politician together in one place.
Anyway, I digress too much. This post is not about the content on your website per se. If you want inspiration on what to do with your state website, just refer to the many websites of political parties around the world. I do, however, want to talk about my freedom. You see, this is what I see on your website:
Firefox 3.0.12 on Ubuntu 9.04
Being in the minority who chose to use a totally free (both gratis and libre) browser (Firefox 3) and operating system (Ubuntu 9.04), I thought it might just be my particular system. Thus, I decided to use a more mainstream browser in a more mainstream operating system to see what I presume you want your visitors to see when they visit your website:
Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP SP3
Everything seems to be in order, which is why I decide to see how well other browsers in Windows XP would do. To my disappointment, this is what I see:
Firefox 2.0.0.20 on Windows XP SP3
I then decided to conduct a series of test, and the following result is as such:
Firefox 3.5.1 on Ubuntu 9.04
Safari Browser on iPhone OS 2.0
Opera 9.64 on Ubuntu 9.04
If you have not noticed a pattern, let me inform you. You see, both Internet Explorer and Opera browsers are proprietary software, which means they do not release their source code to the general public for inspection. They both use proprietary layout engine. Safari browser is proprietary as well, but they use the open source WebKit layout engine. Similarly, open source browser Firefox uses open source layout engine Gecko. I consider myself a open source movement supporter, and a proponent of open source software. While I do not have a deep hatred for proprietary softwares and companies, I do avoid them whenever I can.
It dawns upon me that a party who champions social freedom and equal rights requires me to use a proprietary browser and a proprietary layout engine just to view the website. This seems like a huge irony to me. Thus, DAP Penang Webmaster, please fix your website!
Sincerely,
WhatTheToot!
