Everyone chant with me: NN4 is dead! NN4 is dead!

R.i.p.

[DrDoc]

Today I was able to reach an agreement with one of my clients to drop NN4 support. Finally! That was the last one to go! ;)

I mean, sheesh! the browser isn't even supported by Netscape itself [home.netscape.com] anymore, and hasn't been for months!

Let's push that old stinker off the cliff. Life would be so much easier if we didn't have that ancient junk pile around any longer. :)

[gethan]

I stopped coding for NN4 about 3 months - I only get 1.5% on my largest site - I think that .5% of that was me checking to see how things looked in NN4 ;)

Devedge kicked me over the edge about 3 months ago - if netscape no longer code specifically for their own (obsolete) browser there no way I'm going to.

[DrDoc]

I think the strongest argument, thus far, is giving NN4 code it cannot understand (meaning, hiding styles from it) which will result in a plain, boring, b&w (but still usable) page.

Funny thing... It doesn't require any effort at all! All you have to do is write standards compliant code. Older browsers simply don't get the styles - but they can still render the content!

I've been doing that for about two years now, writing only valid code. The only problem was that I was required to support NN4 (and various other browsers) in the style sheets I created. The page had to look essentially the same (with minor differences).

Now that's history! No more clumsy hiding methods to ensure that NN4 gets a "pretty" page. And you know what... Don't you dare complain about the b&w look to the pages. Sometimes I feel that's an improvement to the "NN4 compatible" pages! ;)

[Dynamoo]

This year (for my main site):

Netscape 4.x - 1.35%
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x - 0.57%
Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.x - 0.02%
Netscape 3.x - 0.01%
Netscape 2.x - 0.00% (actually 2 visitors)

The main problem I have with NS4 is CSS not working, but that's no big deal. The pages still load OK.

I've found that Mac users are about 2.3% and Non-Javascript users 1.8%.

HOWEVER, by piecing together other bits and pieces I think that only about 60% of visitors have Flash installed. How many sites can you think of that use Flash and lock out maybe 40% of their potential visitors?

[papabaer]

Well said DrDoc! You already know my (well documented) opinion...

The damn has burst. The paradigm shift is here.
- papabaer

[Dynamoo]

Hmmm.. my view would be that it doesn't have to look PRETTY in NS4, IE4 or whatever, but it DOES have to function in some way. If I was stuck using NS4 I'd be relieved if the site loaded at all, and wouldn't be bothered if it didn't look quite as pretty as it does with IE6.

My two NS2 users must have had a horrid time because that doesn't even support tables.

Looking at my logs I even had a Lynx visitor this year :)

[papabaer]

<link rel="stylesheet" href="some.css" type="text/css" media="all" />

Older browsers get unstyled content. Follow logical document structure, and usability is faithfully maintained. Win/win!

[tosspot17]

From my Logs...

IE 96.13%

Netscape Compatible 1.26%

Netscape Navigator 2.07%

Others 0.47%

WebTV 0.01%

Opera 0.03%

And a breakdown of those Netscape Browsers...

Netscape 5.0 - 21.50%

Netscape 4.5 - 28.02%

Netscape 7.0 - 16.85%

Netscape 4.79 - 2.60%

Netscape 7.02 - 5.67%

Netscape 3.0 - 3.55%

Netscape 4.7 - 3.38%

Netscape 4.78 - 0.95%

Netscape 7.01 - 5.31%

Netscape 6.1 - 1.33%

Netscape 6.01 - 0.42%

Netscape 6.2.3 - 1.35%

Netscape 4.61 - 0.97%

Netscape 4.73 - 1.04%

Netscape 6.2 - 2.00%

Netscape 4.76 - 0.77%

Netscape 4.72 - 0.40%

Netscape 4.0 - 0.15%

Netscape 6.2.2 - 1.17%

Netscape 4.75 - 0.64%

So yeah, less than 1% :)

[gsx]

I'm another supporter of getting sites to work in NS4. Always have been. But never have tried to achieve visual perfection, just functionality. As long as NS4 customers can give me money and place an order with me, I don't care if everything is in black and white, or graphics don't appear exactly where I want them. If the user cares about that, it's time for them to upgrade.

NS4 has a problem of hiding text when invalid code is found, or not displaying tables if a tag is missed out. I simply check with NS4 that I can navigate and that all the text appears. If both pass, that's my NS4 checking complete. There's no point wasting too much time on perfecting the graphic positions and the colour scheme: leave the perfectionism to about NS6+, Opera 5+ and IE5+.

[d_fused]

And another supporter of getting sites to work in NS4.

Preventing visitors from using their favorite browser is bad for business, especially in highly competitive markets with huge profit margins.

So, would you tell Mr.John Q that you don't want to take his money until he upgrades?

I would rather downgrade my web site and spend another 2 weeks fixing the bugs if I have to.

1% out of say 100 000 visitors is not something you can live without if you are trying to make a living out of your website.

imho.

[digitalghost]

>>1% out of say 100 000 visitors is not something you can live without if you are trying to make a living out of your website.

I do make a living and will continue to do so and all the NN4 users are going to get is an unstyled page. I can't afford to spend time dinking around with NN4 bugs when I could be writing marketing copy.

[percentages]

digitalghost, I agree.

NN4 users must be so backwards they hardly deserve to be allowed on the web! If they can see my sites I guess I won't object, (actually I think they can, but only by accident), if they can't see a few of the pages rendered correctly - well that is just tough luck.

There comes a time when you have to draw a line. Buggy NN4 was never something I cared a hoot about and I am still here today to tell how I didn't waste anytime on it!

There are certain things in this world that are heading for natural death......Netscape, AOL, OPD...wait they all belong to the same outfit....hmmmmmm!

[Robert]

Reasons Netscape 4.7 hangs around . . .
No built in scum-ware to spy on you.
Won't force feed you a virus, you'd have to click on the
exe, not just open your mail.
You can turn off java script and cookies easily.
Best mail and Usenet News reader.
Anyone with a hard drive larger then 3 gigs should have
no problem running several browser programs for different
surfing purposes or when one doesn't work for a site.

[gsx]

dfused:

Preventing visitors from using their favorite browser is bad for business, especially in highly competitive markets with huge profit margins.

Well said. It could even be compared to a physical business premises who do not allow access to visually impared people. They can't see as well as we can, but do we stop them spending money with us?

One thing that I couldn't work out is the three column layout using CSS in NS4. It works fine in IE5+, Opera 5+, NS6+ but would not work in NS4 (I ended up with a two column layout and the third column was underneath the other two columns!). But the information was there, and I wasn't going to spend hours and hours correcting that. But I did nake a few minor adjustments so that people using NS4 could find my prices, my address and telephone number and place an order.

Of course 1% of people doesn't sound like a lot, but I hear people hear saying that they are spending $20000 per month on pay per click search engine providers. I have done this myself, I click on an advert, it does not render in NS7, so I hit the back button. Sometimes, if they are one of only a few advertisers, I may fire up IE to get the information that I want - but I make sure that I click the advert in IE as well - they can pay twice (after all it took me two goes to get to their site and it was not my fault!). But to those who spend $20000 per month, you are potentially wasting $200 per month ($2400 per year) on one advertising medium. Surely, allowing NS4 (and other browsers) to view your information would be worthwhile. An increase of more than 1% of orders is the amount you can expect. Changing my site so NS4 users can order, increased my sales by over 4% (I assume it is because they cannot find many competitors where they can order or view their site, so they continue and find me eventually).

[Liane]

Ok, ok ... OK! Jeeesh!

I admit it. I am a Mac user AND an NN 4.7 user ... at least I was until 10 minutes ago. You guys "dragged me kicking and screaming into the 21st century." :)

I have a valid reason though. You convinced me to download 6.0 quite some time ago (about 2 years ago) and that browser was a nightmare! I had a heck of a time uninstalling it and finding my beloved 4.7 again.

I have just downloaded 7.0 and have not made up my mind if I like it or not ... but I dislike Internet Explorer intensely and Opera doesn't do it for me either.

Some of us old folks may not be up to date in our browser selection but as Tedster said:

Can you imagine the gall of these professional people - doctors, lawyers and some of them even engineers - who would rather spend their time doing their work instead of keeping their browser updated! In fact, many of them never give a browser update a single thought.

You can add charter yacht brokers and almost and most of my friends to that list!

Oaf357:

Well Mac users only upgrade by throwing their Mac in the trash and buying a new one.

Retraction please! :) I'll try anything once (well almost anything) ... but there's no guarantee I won't go back to my old ways if I don't like 7.0.

>added<
Note: Brett supports Netscape 4.7! Already finding some bugs in this thing too. Darn it! :(

[Hester]

Dynamoo: Netscape 2.x - 0.00% (actually 2 visitors)

Surely not...!

[HyperGeek]

I still have a client that surfs using WebTV.

That uses like, AOL 2.0 ANSI Browser doesn't it?

[Hester]

Anyone remember when Netscape 1 and 2 were the browsers to use? Then Explorer came out, which was the first browser to handle animated gifs. I wanted to use it but I was on Windows 3.11 and it failed to work after one page of surfing. Plus I hated the way images came down in lines of garbled graphics. Whereas Netscape faded them in so you could tell if a picture was worth waiting for or not.

In those days, I was on 14.4K so I had to surf wisely. I used to love the Images button on the main toolbar of Netscape. You could use it to toggle images on and off. Turning them off sped up surfing a lot. A real shame that button was removed.

[d_fused]

--> Whereas Netscape faded them in so you could tell if a picture was worth waiting for or not. <--

I think you can still specify a low-resolution image to be displayed prior to downloading the real one. Have no idea whether it is still supported by the browsers, though.

[Hester]

Yes, the lowsrc definition. I believe only Netscape uses it? But I was referring to the way an image scans down progressively - something you still see today. In the old days, you would be waiting several seconds between each pass, as the image built up. Nowadays, what with broadband, the effect is largely irrelevant.

[Dynamoo]

..in the old days, you would be waiting several seconds between each pass, as the image built up.

I remember that.. I think it was progressive JPEG encoding which is still around (in theory). Never use it though.

The first graphical browser I used was Netscape 1.22 which came on two floppies. You had to muck around with stuff like Trumpet Winsock underneath to get it to work. Still, it was better than Lynx - now that's a really unpleasant browsing experience. :)

[madcat]

Excellent > Thanks for sharing Doc, that makes my day too!

[TheDoctor]

Lynx - now that's a really unpleasant browsing experience

Everyone to their own taste. I quite like Lynx. You get stuff simple, without any fuss.

Problems only arise when web authors don't put what they have to say in straightforward text (or aren't allowed to by their managers!).

[requiem]

Hello!

I always do a final test to every project with Netscape 2.02.
If a site is accessible with Netscape 2.02 then it will be
accessible with any browser.

Most clients are saying: "It if works with Explorer,
then it is ok". I do not agree. Any real site must be 100 %
functional even with Netscape 2.02. If a site is not good
looking without a standard browser in another situation,
but all navigation, images and content should be available
in full.

I have had my Netscape 2.02 for as long as I can remember,
and I still use it (almost) everyday.

[digitalghost]

>>I have had my Netscape 2.02 for as long as I can remember,
and I still use it (almost) everyday.

So you're that one guy in my logs. ;)

>>Any real site must be 100 %
functional even with Netscape 2.02.

ROFL Any real engineer should be comfortable using a slide rule...

[requiem]

One more point. Netscape 2.02 is so mush faster than IE6.
Don't have to waste my time with stylesheets, flashbanners,
and all that other stuff that the browser dosn't support.

[Hester]

You must be missing out on so much. I bet it doesn't even handle Flash. The internet must appear to be all black and white text!

All Netscape 1, 2, 3 and 4 users should have their browsers deleted from their hard drives by law. It's criminal to hold back the web by using such out of date tools.

[mincklerstraat]

I see to it that all my sites aren't only compatible with Netscape 1.0, IE 1.0 and Mosaic, but also with theViewmaster Viewer [gasolinealleyantiques.com]. The thing is with the Viewmaster Viewer clients, there's no way they can install any new software in the thing.
The Viewmaster Viewer is small and portable, doesn't break easily when you drop it, and its image rendering is much more realistic than most hand-helds, and notebooks even -- true 3-D. And navigating from frame to frame is lightning fast and very user-friendly. Some gurus speculate that it's likely to make a comeback and replace PDA's. I just hate having to mail my clients a new round thingy every time I update the site. That's why I don't support 8-track any more, too bulky -- and they usually want more of a description of the images than I provide in the alt tags. We would get phone calls at night asking like, that image atled "white bunny," what does it look like -- was it running or sitting, etc. Go get yourself a Viewmaster Viewer, chump. Now I just tell our old 8-track clients to stuff it or find somebody else silly enough to make a site that's 8-track friendly. This is one technology that is definitely making no comeback.
Unfortunately I can't give you any stats since neither of these devices leave user-agent specs in the weblogs.

[JasonIR]

I still code my sites to support Netscape 3.x, Opera, and Lynx. Together they account for 4.35% of my visitors. Chances are some of those visitors will become customers.

[ncsuk]

Im of the opinion that if someone wants some info that badly they will go and download a new browser. I dont have time to waste with making things work in different browsers. 90% (or so) of the population of the planet use IE4+ so as long as it works in that I dont care.

I have 3 browsers installed on my PC for this purpose if it doesnt work in one I use another. (Opera, NN7 + IE6)

If people cant get with the times then that surely is not our problem. New client / customer or not I would rather spend my time doing something constructive like catching up on some old work or updating an old project than spend hours and hours wading through one of my sites 10000 static pages just to make poor NN4 etc browsers happy.

Its just not right...!

[korkus2000]

I think it is strange that for the small segment of trafiic we get from a browser that we still feel the need to support it. I try to have the site at least viewable in NN4 and then sometimes I don't even accomplish that if my audience is a younger crowd. Some sites it has been months since I have see a hit from a NN4 browser.