Preserved Topic: Which Browsers to Design for (Page 1 of 1)

hmmm... I thought there was an "all browsers suck" forum... maybe that was at gurusnetwork?

anyways, I was wondering what browsers you guys make sure your sites work in as a minimum. I use IE 5.5 and I think I may be a bit conservative using NN 4.72 .

What other browsers should I check in?

--Lurch--

Yeah the All Browsers Suck forum is gone now.

Anyway, here is what I learned from my good friends here. Design for all major browsers. That includes: Opera 5 and up, NN 4.7 and up, IE4 and up (maybe just 5 and up). That's about it. Resolution at 800x600. Liquid tables, etc. . .


That is what I do for "business" sites. Don't want to limit the viewers to a business site. As for my personal site I am going to go all out and it will really only be able to viewed "correctly' with IE5 and up and NN6 and up. But that's just me. I'm difficult.

Later,
C:\


~Binary is best~

As CPrompt said above, if you're designing business/corporate web site, it should be viewable in all major web browsers (NN4+, IE4+, O5+). Also, note that some people have stopped supporting NN4 even on corporate web sites, in favor of NN6/Mozilla...

On the other hand on your personal web sites, you can do whatever you want...

Here is my current take on NN 4. Netscape 6 is out, and people have had ample opportunity to switch browsers or upgrade. If a netscape 4 user hasn't upgraded yet, it's most likely for one of these reasons:

1. They don't want to. Lots of people are stubborn about that. That's their opinion.
2. They can't. They don't have the resources to download and install a larger browser (Internet connection speed & cost, disk space, memory, etc).
3. They're unaware of the possibility of upgrading.

The people in number one, in my opinion, are free to go on using the browser just because they like it, but it's silly for them to complain when web pages stop working for them. You can't hold on to an old browser forever and expect everything to work fine.

The people in number two are comparable to the people who have a 640x480 resolution or are using a cell phone to browse the internet or something. They're using inferior technology, and they're aware that they're going to miss some things because of it. If they're not aware, then they're used to missing some things and don't really know the difference. We don't have to spend large amounts of time and money making things pretty for these people.

The people in number 3 either hardly use their computer or the internet, or will figure out sooner or later that they can switch.

So, I figure, it's no longer our job to make things look pretty in netscape 4. What *do* we have to do? We have to make the content available to them. www.alistapart.com is a good example of this. Go there in netscape 4 and you'll see that the style sheets hardly work, and the layout of the page is sorta poor. But all the text is there and perfectly readable.

I think that's all we need to worry about. Who cares if it looks a little poor to these people? As I said, they're either too stubborn to upgrade, and it's not our responsibility to make things perfect to them, or they're unable to upgrade, and they sort of just have to deal with a bit of ugliness here and there, or they don't know they can upgrade, in which case they're clueless enough to not know the difference.

Give them the content; no one should be cut off from the content, especially for a business site. But don't spend tons of time/money on making things pretty for them. It's not worth it.

thanks guys... that's basically what I've been thinking.
I actually stumbled accross A List Apart the other day, and found it to be very interesting to read. What I'm going to do is design for W3C specs (for css and whatnot) so its completely valid. I'll then use a php browser checker to send a plain-jane style sheet to inferior browsers such as nn4. I will have a note on the page for those browsers saying that they need to upgrade their browser, but the content is still available to them.

I'm actually working on a site for myself that I'll have up in the site reviews forum soon...
thanks!

--Lurch--

An easy way to hide some style sheets from old browsers (mainly NN4): use the @import rule for the complicated stuff. For simple formatting that NN can read, use the <link> tag.

Just one comment slime, I work at a university, where the majority of staff and faculty are using NN4.7. This is because of issues outside their control. I think there are plenty of such situations where users don't have a choice, and I think it would be rude to design sites which their old browsers can't display as you intended. Yah, Nah?

=rotren=

[This message has been edited by rotren (edited 03-08-2002).]

*cough* at a certain 'big three auto company' (mentioning no names) NN4.51 is the standard on all are Unix workstations and believe it or not, MS95 is still the Office enviroment for PC.

Admittedly we are in the process of (slowly) migrating to W2K PRO and IE5 (woo hoo - not! well for the IE bit anyhoo)

0.2 cents

I completely understand that, rotren. I mentioned those people. I think they have as much of a right to access the content on my site as anyone else. But let me draw a little analogy.

I have a modem at home. I can't convince my parents to upgrade their connection; besides, it would cost them a large sum of money to do so. As a result, I'm not able to view streaming media, download large files, play some games over the internet, and it took me quite a bit of time to get to this reply-to-thread page. It sort of sucks, but hey - I'm able to use the internet, I can read the forum, and I can download files if I want to walk away for an hour or so; it's the extras which I can't have.

But the thing is, I can't go complaining that people are making their sites too bandwidth-intensive, and I can't complain that mp3s are slow to download, and I can't complain that no one will join my modem-hosted Warcraft II game, because it's not the responsibility of everyone else to make things perfect for me with my 28.8 connection speed.

I am restricted by circumstances beyond my control, but I haven't been cut off; just inconvenienced.

Don't cut off Netscape 4 users. But don't let them hold back technology, and don't let them waste your time that could better be spent doing other things, and don't rip your hair out because you can't get things to work perfectly for them. Make sure they can read your page, and make sure things look halfway-decent to them. But don't fret if you can't get your text centered perfectly in their browser, or your scrollbar to appear just right in it. It *is* sad that some people are still forced to use that browser. It's also sad that handicapped people can't play active sports. Sometimes circumstances beyond our control make life harder. We need to deal with the inconveniences.

If you *really* love those netscape 4 users, I have no problem with you making your site work for them; it's your call when you're the one designing. Personally, I've decided they're not worth that much time to me anymore. I'll let them see my content; that's all they really need.

If it makes you feel any better, a well-written CSS based site will display perfectly fine on even Netscape 1.0.

rotren and vp are right about NS4.x usage - I've seen the same thing myself. I think mr.maX and CPrompt have touched on the important issue that it all depends on your site:

1. Commercial - try to make it look the same in the Big Three and NS4.x (within reason!!).

2. Focused - you may have a site which will only be drawing in people likely to have the most up-to-date browsers and plugins and you can usually push the envelope here. The trick is to know your audience.

3. Personal site - do what you want (unless it is drawing a very large and varied audience).

Even if you are aiming your site at the Big Three (IE, NS6, Opera) you should always make sure all your content is visible in NS4.x (not supporting NS4.x, in my opinion, only means making the decision not to make it look the same as the Big Three and it doesn't mean making content inaccessible - by moving to a non-tables layout. for example, you are potentially increasing accessibility to your site for different devices but this shouldn't be at the expense of excluding NS4.x users).

Just my take.

Emps

yeah, that's how I've been designing for the last few years Emps. I figure I'm going to work out my own clean way of sending a plain page to older browsers just to be safe, and have a css-intense site for the (relatively) new browsers. Its rediculous that we still have to worry about designing for such crappy browsers (browsers that never did really come close to w3c specs).

I just did a site for the local British Car club and since its a relatively small club, and I have an email list for most members, I sent out a quick survey asking which os, browser and other stuff they use... All replies fit into IE 5.5 and up! perfect! I made sure the content is fully visible and functional in nn4 tho as soon as the site is up I'll post it in the site review forum for you guys to tear apart.

thanks

--Lurch--

Yep, I think we are on same wavelength. I'm doing some commercial sites at the moment, so what I am thinking is that for commercial sites, you just HAVE TO design for NN4x, because if you don't, it's like having a sign saying 'people with wheelchairs not welcome' on the front door to a theatre. But if it's a personal site or similar, don't lick that envelope, push it all the way! Personally, I would like all NN4x browser to just blow up in a cloud of smoke one day (soon), does anyone know how to arrange that?

=rotren=

I am starting to code for Opera but I'm still unclear as to just how much usage it gets. Does someone have any stats on where it fits in with IE and NN?

AND can I assume that the majority of Opera users have it set to identify as MSIE 5.0?



[This message has been edited by Bugimus (edited 03-09-2002).]

Global web stats (by TheCounter service) can be found here: http://www.thecounter.com/stats/ One of the interesting facts is that NN4 is used by aprox. 4% of people, while newest NN6 is used by aprox. 0% percent of people (the acutal number is so small, that it can't even take 1% from the 100%)...

Bugimus, I wouldn't suggest you to rely on that. Just pretend that Opera is always running in web standards mode, and check UserAgent string for presence of word "Opera"...

That stats page is a great resource. Thanks for the link.

Well, I've been working all day on some CSS stuff and NN6 (well Mozilla) and I am completely DISGUSTED. If Mozilla is at 0.9.8 and it is this slow and this easy to crash with code that comforms to standards, then I just don't see any use for this piece of ****!!!

Can someone, anyone, give me a reason to spend one more minute with NN6/Mozilla? I feel I've wasted too much time as it is.

Phew, I feel better now that I've said that