work to old versions what is the standard

what is the older version standard of browsers

[frontend designer]

Hey everyone, well I have just been told by my I hate to say it (spinless Manager) that the minumem spec for designing to and having our sites working on are

IE 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0
Netscape 4.7/4.8, 6.0 and 7.0
Mozilla 1.7
Firefox 1.0
Opera 8

can any one out there tell me if there is a industry standard?
also I am keen to work more with css and I dont think it works at all in Netscape 4.7/4.8 or am I wrong in my thoughts.

If so how does the bbc site manage to have at least a lay out that is still readable in Netscape 4.7/4.8.

Hope some of you out there can shine a bit of light on this issue as I am a little concerned about working to such a old spec

Thanks in advance

[BlobFisk]

Hi frontend_designer,

There is no real industry standard, although MS IE5.5 and above are the most used browsers. I would say though that Nescape 4.x is not really designed for any more. It's use is very very very limited!

It's about your audience - who are your users? If they are average Jane and Joe web users, then IE5.5 and above and Mozilla/Firefox are fine IMHO.

[tedster]

css does work on NN4, but it's very buggy and partial. If your manager wants the site to LOOK the same on NN4 you will be limited in what you can do. However, you can still style basic elements and do a half decent job. However, css positioning and floats are pretty rough and should probably be avoided.

If the site just needs to work on NN4 (it degrades gracefully as they say) then you are in better shape. You can serve a basic css file with <link> that all browsers (including NN4) will use and then bring in more sophisticated styling with an @import statement. Netscape 4 does not support @import so only the other browsers will apply those styles.

Some websites use @import exclusively and serve completely unstyled content to Netscape 4 - making sure the page is still functional, even if ugly.

[frontend designer]

Thanks BlobFisk and tedster for your help on this, the problem is the company I work for has a specialised market the MOD and they have a very old system which is a pain in the rear because you just can not do anything exciting some times as a designer you want to be creative and then because of one market they say that everything has to work for them, me on the other hand I say they should listent o there mission statment that they have just come up with which is driving technology forward LMAO that si a joke if they want to work on NS4

So i can do the basic ctyle and mainly use the @import and that will help matters then?