Opinions on Old Browsers

[smeagol]

I have been doing web design/programming for about 4 years now. I always design for cross-browser compatibility, but the one thing that continues to get under my skin is Netscape 4.*.

I continue to design with Netscape 4 in mind. I'm curious as to whether any of you think Netscape 4 is worth the trouble.

Do you design/program to support Netscape 4?

Smeagol

[Quiet Storm]

I won't design for Netscape at all... no matter what version.

When you get one company making browsers which the coding is not compatible with other versions of the same make - that's stupidity. If I code for NS4, it should show up nicely in NS6. I shouldn't have to code for NS4, NS6, IE4, IE5.5, IE6....

I code for IE5.0+ If it works in 5.0, it will work for v5.5 & v6.0

:mad:

[smeagol]

My sentiments exactly! Well said.

Smeagol

[moonkitten]

I think it depends on your target audience. I work for a corporation that has no control over the client software, so we have to take Netscape 4.* into consideration. Sites don't always look pretty for Netscape users, but they must be functional.

The client relationship also comes into play. If you can tell the client "Too bad it doesn't work on your computer, you'd better upgrade to the browser of my choice", then more power to you! But for those who have clients that insist that the designer accomodate THEIR preferences, then you will have to do so. After all, THEY pay the bills.

Isn't the browser war a pain? ;)

moonkitten

[redbeth]

Netscape is a pain, but so is IE on the MacIntosh. Right now I'm trying to learn CSS so I can get a little closer to the recommended standards. Digital Web Magazine's Featured Article (http://www.digital-web.com/features/feature_2002-09.shtml) this month:

99.9% of Websites Are Obsolete
An excerpt from Forward Compatibility: Designing & Building With Standards - By Jeffrey Zeldman

The book isn't coming out till next year, but when it does, I'll be buying it.

Moonkitten wrote:
If you can tell the client "Too bad it doesn't work on your computer, you'd better upgrade to the browser of my choice", then more power to you! But for those who have clients that insist that the designer accomodate THEIR preferences, then you will have to do so. After all, THEY pay the bills.

Yes they do! And if you let them know that a site could break the next time Microsoft upgrades their browser, then that's a strong argument for designing according to FORWARD compatability rather than backwards.

[Vladdy]

<put flame-retardant suit>

You do not design to A BROWSER, you design to THE STANDARD.

Then "Your browser does not comply with THE STANDARD" sounds much better than "Upgrade to the browser of MY CHOICE"

</put flame-retardant suit>

[jkd]

Vladdy, EXACTLY!

Unfortunately, if you design to a standard, more often than not IE fails to support it correctly, or at all. :(

I still can't get over how much IE is stifling innovation in design, effects, etc on the web. A powerful, standards compliant browser such as Mozilla (or Netscape 7), but with a signifcant market share is what the web needs.

[beetle]

First, I agree with Vladdy and jkd, but let me add this.

Everytime you develop a site and add compatibility for NS4.x, YOU are the reason why 2% of users still have it, and not 0%.

In other words, by not supporting standards, you are against them. There is no grey area or neutral side.

I guarantee you that if developers (or hobbyists) stopped the ridiculousness of supporting browsers like NS4.x (by magic, let's imagine it all happened this instant) in less than 1 month, most NS4.x users would upgrade during that time period.

According to thecounter.com, last month, over 3.5x as many users were running NS4.x over NS6. Why? Because nobody feels the URGE to upgrade because so many sites (and their developers) are appeasing the beast (4.x).

Trust me, don't worry about 'supporting the 4.x users'. They'll upgrade in time, and they can still have Netscape (and the best browser standards-wise) with version 7.

[hairynugs6382]

I agree boycot netscape 4!!

I never have and never will bother with it!

[brothercake]

Standards do not say everything; they leave big holes for implementation which inevitably create cross-browser idiosynchrasies. This is annoying; but it will never change.

Mozilla's most powerful abilities are based on prioprietary technology, just as IE's are. I only really know about the latter -

IE allows for interoperability of web applications like no other browser can come close to. It's all too easy to sneer at Microsoft and say that MS products are only interoperable with other MS products. It may be true, but what does it matter when the vast majority of your user base is on that platform anyway.

Would anyone here seriously consider designing a page to strictly to standards even when doing so meant that the page looked a mess in IE? It would be pointless to put standards ahead of market reality unless you have no real stake in it.

So I design for what people use, not what I think they should use. While I agree will the sentiments expressed here I find they fail to take into account a fairly basic reality - the users neither know nor care about any of this; they just expect it to work. Even the ones who use Netscape 4 - the same people who, when you ask them what browser they use, they stare blankly, because they don't know what you mean.

[hairynugs6382]

lol... I can see your point! You can't expect every tom, dick and harry to understand the reasons they should use a certain browser!

[joh6nn]

i design my sites to work in as many environments as possible. on my personal site, i use javascript and css to make it interesting, but if you're using lynx, you should still be able to see all of my content, in a reasonable format and layout.

i don't think it's about designing for browsers, and i don't think it's about designing for standards. i think it's about designing it to just work.

if i tell a client that the javascript i wrote for his site will work in all standards compliant browsers, and then he looks at it NS4, he's not going to care that it's forward compatible. he's going to be ripping because it doesn't work now.

if however, i work to make the site look decent, be easily navigable, and just plain work in as many places as possible ( with as little effort as possible. being functional is not the same as being perfect. ) then instead of being raked across the coals, i might just get a bonus. or at least a sense of accomplishment.

who knows. i'm young, i'm inexperienced. truth be told, i'd rather let you guys do the exploring, and learn from your mistakes. ::grin::

[beetle]

Good point, joh6nn and brothercake. In previous browser-related discussions I too made the point about economics playing a big role in the technology that is used. And sometimes differently than ways already mentioned here. For example, at one web-job I had, some clients didn't want to pay for twice the development for the (then) 10% NS4.x users. So, that led to a proliferation of IE-only sites being produced. As you can see, this is an equally punishing blow, although quite opposite the other scenarios, but they both mean bad news for standards promotion.

[Vladdy]

Originally posted by joh6nn
if i tell a client that the javascript i wrote for his site will work in all standards compliant browsers, and then he looks at it NS4, he's not going to care that it's forward compatible. he's going to be ripping because it doesn't work now.
[/B]

That is a matter of how you quote your work.

My experience is that when I give a client the following options:

1 You can have the site done in X days (that means $XXXX), it would have this set of features, but <10% of visitors would have to upgrade their browsers to view it (links to the latest browsers will be provided)

2 If you want the site to be accessible by ~99% of visitors and keep as many of the proposed features as possible it will take 2 - 3 times as long (and will cost 2 - 3 times as much)

3 If you want the site to be accessible by 99% of visitors and keep the development time and cost at the same level, the list of features will be cut in 2-3 times

the choice is always the same.

The idealistic "I design for the public and I aim to please it" applies to your personal site ONLY. Everything else you design for the GUY WHO SIGNS THE CHECK and its within your ability to steer his desires in the right direction.

[joh6nn]

actually, my approach ( keep in mind that i have had less than a handful of clients, and that, as i said, i have no experience ) is to find out what they want, and base my pricing off of how long i expect it to take, for me to make it work everywhere i can possibly get it to work. then, i mention that i could probably do it faster, and therfore, for less, but, it wouldn't be as flexible.

so far, for the 3 or people i've done actual, paying work for, this has been effective. they're willing to pay me more, to work longer, to get it to work, everywhere. i think presentation may be the key here. but again, i don't know, i've only done this just the 3 or 4 times.

[firepages]

Unfortunately, if you design to a standard, more often than not IE fails to support it correctly, or at all. "

sorry but thats just plain hogwash Jason, perhaps IE has little or no support for any of the stuff that you are into these days but not all of that is standards compliant or actually implemented anywhere either .

the vast majority of all pages on the web right now are accessible via all IE4+ browsers that is not the case for NS4.* and early NS6 releases

I notice that Mozilla is now becoming what it has been threatening to become for a long time... useful ! and 3 cheers for that but only now and only by the skin of its teeth.

I have particular interest in embedding gecko with GTK and am looking forward to fun & games with that, but right now Moz/NS needs to rebuild its reputation (with the real world not so much us) and hogwash just looks like hogwash and is not very convincing.

I am happily now at a stage where I can refuse to code down to NS4 , the sooner we stop supporting it the sooner it can RIP.

[whackaxe]

i have a program for CSS and it has a list of all the difernt oprions for nearlly all major browsers and standards and i have noticed that IE has to most compatible

[jkd]

Originally posted by whackaxe
and i have noticed that IE has to most compatible

Then your program has no idea about Gecko. Gecko's CSS support goes up to some CSS3 properties implemented by the vendor-specific -moz- until they became standardized. You can't even say IE has decent CSS2 support.

Firepages, I still stand by my original statement. IE doesn't support any DOM2 (unless you argue its DOM1 Core support carries over to DOM2 Core). It has poor support of the more powerful CSS2 selectors and properties. It can't even correctly validate against the XHTML 1.1 doctype (whenever it tries, it throws an error about an invalid entity). It doesn't support XML applications (i.e. XHTML) through XML Namespaces. No XLink support at all. Etc.

Those are all old standards that have been around for a few years (with the exception of XHTML 1.1, but it shows that IE has poor validating abilities).

Whenever I complain that IE can't do something Moz can't, I'm not hypocritical claiming IE can't do XMLSerializer() or LiveConnect or setters/getters, etc. I complain when it doesn't support a well-defined standards. So:

but not all of that is standards compliant or actually implemented anywhere either .

Is completely incorrect. It is all standards compliant, and at least implemented in Mozilla. If it wasn't implemented, how could I work with it (besides theoretically of course)?

[brothercake]

It seems clear that people's attitudes are tempered by their real-world experiences.

Right now, my major ongoing job is maintaining a site for a research company; many of their visitors are in civil service and other govt departments whose upgrade schedule amounts to "we might think about it in a couple of years ... maybe"

Those are the people who visit our site in Netscape 3 and 4. They are not going to upgrade; it doesn't matter even if *they* want to; they just can't because they choked by cost-limiting bureaucracy

Much of what has been said here sounds to me like verging on technocracy - all this about "people using old browsers is holding the net back". Holding it back from what? Making our lives easier? Giving us less work to do? How does that benefit the end user?

[jkd]

Originally posted by brothercake
Holding it back from what? Making our lives easier? Giving us less work to do? How does that benefit the end user?

How about the next generation of web design and a new degree of client-side interactivity never before possible?

[brothercake]

Let me qualifywhat I said - I'm not for a moment suggesting that its worth spending the time to make highly complex DHTML effects also work in netscape 4 (unless you enjoy the challenge for its own sake - which personally I do, but that's another story)

However it is always worth the time to make them degrade, so that the resulting pages are readable and don't generate errors. I don't believe there is any excuse for not doing that unless your client base is predicatable. Any publicaaly-accessible website should work in every browser, to at least a basic "you can read pages and click links" extent

[whackaxe]

i think that people who have old computers/browsers just have to accept that they have old gear. i for one have a very old comp that cant even accept games you buy in the 10€(about the same in $ and about £6) basket that are years old! when i somesoftware that cant run on my comp (example photoshop 7.0 need s 128mb ram when i have 64) i just accept it and tell myself my comps hit the third age. the thing is trying to tell that to people who dont knwo the differnce between thier mouse and their monitor....

[redhead]

ok... i'm sensing browser flames... so i'll throw in what i think :)

<noquote>

basically... of the few sites ive designed... they are going to be among millions of others on the web. in the end... some surfers (some of you, perhaps) will see over 25, 50, maybe even 100 (if your free time is longer than your sleeping pattern, you have no job, and you're on adsl ;)) sites in a weekend. you can probably clearly remember the design of say... two. thats where i want mine to be... but my site among millions of others isnt gonna make the world think "wahey! lets all get Mozilla 1.1", its not gonna happen, so to make it work for the 80% using IE, and all the others, from Mozilla to netscape 3, some poeple are gonna think "this site is rubbish, the margins are too wide, the fonts are too small, the javascript doesnt work, the css doesnt work, this table is overlapping that..."...

(uh-oh... everythings gone unrelated and ive forgotton what my own point was)

in the end... we've gotta go with the majority, because that is what our clients are going with, but also move forward, be compliant, and nag everyone to upgrade...

</noquote>

[Quiet Storm]

So far, no one has seemed to notice, but my site crashes NS4... on purpose. It's my little evil way of forcing NS users to notice that their browser is flawed. :D


I'd like to know if it also crashes NS6, but I don't use those browsers - just NS4 here at the college for testing.

[joh6nn]

oh, i noticed. i just never said anything. i've noticed other interesting things tucked into your source, too.

[whackaxe]

you mind telling us what the source is to crash NS4 storm, or are you keeping that under your hat?:D

[brothercake]

Originally posted by Quiet Storm
So far, no one has seemed to notice, but my site crashes NS4... on purpose.

Really? On purpose? Or is that just ad-hoc post rationale? The reason it crashes ns4 it because it generates more errors than the interpretor can deal with. Like a stack overload.

It doesn't crash ns6 or mozilla, it just looks a mess; that layout could be made to work in moz, but it would be more work - worth doing though.

FYI Crashing netscape 4 is not hard - any liberal use of IE-proprietary coding will do that. :rolleyes:

[Quiet Storm]

Originally posted by whackaxe
you mind telling us what the source is to crash NS4 storm, or are you keeping that under your hat?:D

LOL! :D


<!--//NETSCAPE KILLER!! //-->
<html>
<table>
<tr><td style="margin-left:5px">
<blockquote></blockquote>
<table>
<tr><td></td></tr><tr><td></td></tr>
</table>
</td></tr>
</table>
</html>

Just that simple!

My site use to crash NS on accident, so I looked into what could be the problem, and found a few different ways to do it - this one uses the least amount of code. ;)


This is suppose to crash NS6:
http://www.ussrback.com/safe.htm

Could someone check? :)

[Cam]

I've followed this discussion with some interest. I recall being on 33.6 dial-up and getting really annoyed that I had to download a huge bloatware program in order to make a website useable/navigable. Often times I'd never go back to the site. Lots of other pages on the web...

Since getting high speed (and upgrading my browser), and while starting to learn CSS, I found I was less concerned about old browser rendering. A comment from Brothercake to an earlier post of mine, made me reconsider. Checking the stats for site I've written, about 15% of the hits are with Netscape, 80% of those with NS4.x. As this is a member service-oriented web-page, I don't have a lot of choice but to address the compatability considerations.

I came across an interesting comment on evolt.org regarding ver 4 and layouts.

0.02

Cam