Preserved Topic: crossbrowser site design...

I've checked around a bunch of home pages by alot of the "mad scientists" here and I've noticed a great deal of them doesn't work right in netscape 4.5. (As if anything works in netscape 4.5). Take doc's or slimes websites for example. Its frustrating to not be able to use alot of the technologies available in dhtml, css etc, simply because netscape or opera doesn't support it. Do some of you just bag it and use it anyway? What are your thoughts?



[This message has been edited by jive (edited 06-09-2002).]

[This message has been edited by jive (edited 06-09-2002).]

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

I totally agree. But I'm told that I should design to support all browsers to "maximize" my audience. But I'd say that anyone who has a 28k modem and netscape isn't all that interested in the web anyway. Makes me just want to flood the earth with ie downloads. Or maybe we outta create some virus tha utterly obliterates all netscape browsers on the web.....well call it project "kill".

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

are there really that many opera users?? I bought an old pentium 100mhz (yeaahhhh!!) with windows 95 on it at a yard sale just because it was 20 bucks and I could eventually connect it to a router for internet access. And it has netscape 4.5 on it. So I don't know if people are just using it because they don't know anybetter. Maybe someone should come up with the "automatically work in any browser script" . Put it in your header, and wala!!

quote:

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Maybe someone should come up with the "automatically work in any browser script"

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Yeah, someone should come up with that. I doubt that it will ever happen.

I am not that good a dHTML so I don't really use it a lot in my pages. Unless I am just testing at how something works. I do sometimes use ready made scripts like the BrotherCake menu. It works in all major browsers.

I still hold to fact that you should design "business" sites in all major browsers and for your own pages, let it all hang out! Just make sure that you use a browser sniffer to tell people to upgrade.

You can't force someone to upgrade. Hell most of them just don't care or see the need to. The production manager at my work still uses NN4.5 on his PowerMac. Tried to tell him to upgrade (hell, it's free), he just shrugs and said "Yeah, porbably should"



Later,
C:\


~Binary is best~

thing is even some css features aren't even supported in netscape 4.5 and opera, but I know they're making a big pust to standardize it and replace all the deprecated tags. I don't know.... whatcha gonna do.

(I suppose I should add that innerHTML is *not* part of the W3C's DOM standard, so it's not bad that Opera doesn't support it. What *is* bad about Opera, however, is that it doesn't support any of the *rest* of the DOM.)

You have a choice. Code a site like we did 3 years ago and make it look good in NN4 or build a future compatible site and screw NN4.
In my opininon, as long as your content is accessible with NN4 you don't have to worry about the look.

Sasha »

What is accesable on n.n 4? I swear, whoever uses it misses half the web. But I think with professional sites I will design for nn.4. Or at least make sure it degrades well in it. You might as well throw dhtml out the window with that on mind. I guess I'm just to picky. We need to start a standard revolution.



[This message has been edited by jive (edited 06-09-2002).]

www.webstandards.org =) (down at the moment though, soon to be brought back)

Here's my take on how to make pages work in NN4:

1. Start with your content. Bare bones, only necessary images. Don't use font tags or any sort of formatting at all. Make it linear. It should look like crap when you're done, but it should be readable in a logical order. This type of page will work in *any* browser, even a text browser.

2. Add a basic style sheet to it with CSS using the <link ...> tag in the <head>. Just make it look nice, but don't add complicated CSS stuff in here. This is the point where you want it to look OK in NN. Basic formatting, background images, and font specification, not much more than that.

3. Add a more advanced style sheet with the @import rule inside <style ...> tags. Since NN4.x and lower is unable to see this style sheet (and so is IE 4.x and lower, I believe), you can put more advanced stuff in this sheet. This sheet should make it look like you want the finished product to look. Put the details into this one. But browsers that can't handle it will ignore it.

4. Add scripting to it. Since there's no easy way (like @import with style sheets) to hide your script from old browsers, you have to do the detection within your script. Don't deal with anything that's not in the ECMAScript or DOM standards, and before your script actually does anything, make sure it tests that the browser can handle it (with something like "if(document.getElementById)"). If the browser can't handle it (like NN4), it will ignore the script.

By designing in "layers" like this, you assure that someone using even the most basic browser can read your page, but someone with a good, recent browser (like IE 6 or Moz) will get a page that looks great and has whatever cool features you choose to add to it.

I am currently working on a front page to my site that uses this method. It's great - NN4 users can read my page (though it doesn't look that good to them), but people with *good* browsers are getting this cool functionality that I'm adding to it.

So, in short, I say, ignore NN users when it comes to stuff that their browser can handle, but give them the basics of your web page. Supporting NN doesn't mean dropping DHTML.

sounds like a good method. I don't have much experiance with @imports styles. Can you give me some sample code of @import being used?



[This message has been edited by jive (edited 06-09-2002).]

jive: Go to www.alistapart.com and have a look at their past issues, they have some good articles explaining the use of @import.

kuckus (cell #282)

Up until my puzzle project, I supported NN4 in just about all I did. I have officially stopped worrying about supporting it. Especially considering that barely a percentage point of my visitors use it anymore.

. . : slicePuzzle

I guess an important aspect is the audience. My stats page has the following info:
IE - 94.4%
Netscape 6 - 1.7%
Netscape 4 - 1.5%
Opera - 0.7%
Unknown - 1.3%
Others - 0.4%
So, why should I worry about Opera and Netscape 4? So much work for just an extra 2.2%! I prefer spending my time doing a better site for 96.1% of my audience (IE + NN6) than spending the same time to make a worst site and have near 100% audience (96.1% of which accessing the worst site). It's a compromise. If I can't have it all, I have to choose what's best for the majority.

I personally only support the 5+ browsers for my "play" sites. for my enterprise level stuff (work) I still support the 4+ but I write my scripting to degrade gracefully in the older browsers. Since I don't do fancy DHTML on my work sites it generally works well .

To be fair NN 4+ is what 3-4 years old now? It was released before the DOM was setteled on so it's kinda unfair to bang it for not supporting standards that didn't exist at the time.



.:[ The Tao of Steve ]:.
Be Desireless
Be Excellent
Be Gone
...................................

Funny you ask, NN4 turned five years old today =)

I don't think anyone's really angry at NN4 for not supporting standards. We're just angry at the people who still use it.