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Last year I posted that most of my sites statistics were showing Netscape 4
users around 30%. Well, a year later, they are still running about 30% - 29% to
be more accurate. Granted, most of my sites are informational in nature:
Municipal information, Transit Authority, theater resource, etc., and my draw
more on users such as schools and libraries. But I think it is important for
everyone to keep backwards compatibility in mind.
I still do not think you can force people to upgrade. People stick with what they
are most comfortable with. I can also say factually that some sites I deal with in
my “day job” require Netscape 4. Granted, these sites deal with government
related information, but due to the high cost of upgrading, most do not change.
So when our office upgrade to Windows XP, we had to install Netscape 4.
Take this rant for what it is worth - just an FYI.
Marshall: 1- MS bundles Netscape 4 with windows XP.
Not sure what you're implying there as XP comes without Netscape.
One site, which is used by all police departments, REQUIRES and only accepts NN4 and nothing else.
How can this be? What code does Netscape 4 have that other browsers don't? The only thing I can think of is the <layer> tag. I would have thought that newer browsers would still be able to see the content on the site? Unless it is just the encryption you mentioned before.
How long will this situation last? Will users always have to have Netscape 4 just for this site? (It reminds me of a Dilbert show I just saw on TV where they have to reprogram a computer to handle Y2K, but it was so long ago the guy who wrote the program has forgotten what he wrote.)
The reason a lot of people stick with Netscape 4 is (as I see it) because it has limited capabilities, so is secure in what it cannot do. IE6 has much more to hack at. Almost every month Microsoft issue a new security patch for it. Also, hackers are less likely to focus on a browser with only a tiny percentage of the market.
There's something I don't get in this whole discussion. Isn't it possible (okay, so I would say highly preferable and not all that hard) to design a site that *functions* in NS4, but not at 100%. In other words, you can just do a simple check and not feed a stylesheet. So the layout is all gone and it's one long page of text. NS4 users can generally get the information. If they wanted a cutting edge web experience, they would have upgraded three years ago. They clearly don't.
So I would say
- don't design for them in the sense that the site will look absolutely great in NS4 (and lynx and whatever) and identical to the way it looks in IE 9.7 when it comes out in 2012 and only the cyberAmish are using NS4.
- but design for them in the sense that they can still see all of the elements and read all the text. Okay, so maybe they can't see the PNG images. Fine. But they can still get the info.
Tom
For the month before our redesign, we calculated that 97.44% of our users were using standards-compliant browsers (IE 5+, Netscape 6+, Mozilla, Opera 6+, Safari, Chimera, and Konqueror), and the rest were either non-detectable or using non-compliant browsers. The only substantial groups among the non-compliant browsers were IE 4.x at 1.32% and Netscape 4.x at 1.17%. The other .05% of our users were either undetectable or were using obscure or masked user agents.....
Now that digital lifestyle devices, tablets, wireless phones, and other Internet appliances are beginning to come of age, we need to worry about presenting our content to these devices so that it is optimized for their display capabilities. Do we want to send a 100KB index page full of Flash, images, and tables to a small wireless device
In other words, you may lose more visitors by making a site NS4 compatible (in the sense of looking exactly right in NS4 rather than degrading gracefully) than by making it compatible with a wide variety of new devices.
The interview is at [devedge.netscape.com...]
and is a GREAT READ. Especially see his answer to the question "You've chosen to block old browsers from accessing the site. Why is that?" Very interesting and really well though-out.
Tom
- don't design for them in the sense that the site will look absolutely great in NS4 (and lynx and whatever)
Okay, so maybe they can't see the PNG images.
Only around 0.5% of my visitors use Netscape 4, so although it's still functional, I don't get overly stressed if it doesn't look quite so great. It actually looks better in Netscape 4.x than Netscape 6.0. It's to be fine in Netscape 6.1+ though.
Count yourself lucky it's only Netscape 4 that so many people on your site are still using... I had to maintain Netscape 3 support until a few months ago.
As tedster has already said, just because 30% of your visitors use Netscape 4, it doesn't mean that 30% of internet users in general are. It varies greatly depending on the type of site. By using the word "more", I mean "more than the average number of visitors that would normally use a certain browser". Netscape 7 includes Mozilla.
Education sites get more Netscape 4
Military sites get more Netscape 4
Hobyist sites get more IE
Sites for children get more IE
Girly blog sites get virtually no Netscape at all
eCommerce sites get more Netscape 4
Techie sites get more Netscape 7
Certain websites will get significantly more Netscape 7 users, such as the SillyDog701 website, which gets about 60%.
That's the only point where i disagree with heartlandcat. Lynx is so grateful, it's just a black background with a white machine-font and green links and red bold or whatever it's setup to. It's so retro you just gotta love it - in Lynx, content is truly king ;)
Otherwise, the point about different types of sites having different browser profiles is a very good and absolutely valid one. You should of course design according to your target audience.
/claus
And another thing... age notwithstanding, you are far, far less likely to get hacked surfing around with NS 4.x than with any version of IE. Having said that, I'm a Mozilla 1.4 kinda guy though I use Netscape 4.x on UNIX generally.
DA
And the parallel, and the point no one is missing, is that "most UNIX" = a very small percentage of the surfing public.
"Fred, if we go with your suggestion we can hit 98% of the market, but we miss the one-eyed owners of 3-legged dogs that are over 3 years of age but not over 7 years of age. Sorry Fred, we're letting you go, thanks for defining our niche-market though".
"Bill, is that the dogs or the owners that have to be between the ages of 3 and 7"? ;)
If the site is purely for your own use, you can do anything you like with it.
If you are partially answerable to other partners, simply document that your design won't support X% of the potential audience, and let them agree to that or not.
If you are a website designer, disclose upfront to your potential clients what browsers you don't support and why. They'll throw business your way, or not.
If you are a user like me, well I translate: "This site works best in..." as "We want to give you an inferior service" and react accordingly.
I detest seeing "This site is best viewed in" - what right has the author to tell me this? Also it's usually out of date, saying the site is best in IE4 at 800 x 600!
Folks don't feel the "need" to upgrade their browsers, they feel the need to browse the web. Having previously worked for a large organisation with a high proportion of nn4 users, in my experience folks don't blame their browser if a site doesn't work or blocks them (cos other sites work ok), they blame the *site*.
-subscribe!
That particular statement is just a plain misunderstanding of professionalism. The whole point of CSS is that you actually do implement a design that can be viewed in all browsers. There's no need to inform your user base about your individual browser preferences, it's their choice.
The whole concept of "graceful decay" ensures that people with browsers that do not support all features will still be able to use the whole site perfectly well. And of course, part of the reason to choose a particular browser is that you are satisfied with the built in rendering engine and the overall way it works for you, so there's really no reason you should force a site to behave in the same way across browsers.
Really, the internet users of this world couldn't care less about your particular site. Their choice of browsing equipment is only based on one particular site in extreme cases like the one Marshall mentioned, otherwise the choice is based on the viewing experience of the sum of all sites visited.
If you decide to use a browser that do not support ActiveX or Java or JavaScript or VBscript or pictures or blinking text or whatever (and perhaps also only 800x600), it's your choice as a user and that choice is perfectly valid. Webdevelopers just have to face this - there's no way they can make all visitors view their design/layout as they prefer it to be viewed themselves.
/claus
After re-reading this comment, i think i missed saying this: I do not want pages for the latest IE, NN, Opera, Konqueror, Mozilla, whatever, and not for the oldest mosaic either. They all display stuff differently and that's perfectly fine with me - even when i use something that one browser-type will not display at all, such as graphichs, tables (for the really old ones) or whatever. The way to display the pages is entirely left to the user - just like the mono radio or the black-and-white television set. It's just not my problem, and i don't care - if people want to see it their way, let them.
Yes, even if i personally think that their individual choice is an ugly one, and that it totally ruins my otherwise very appealing design. If i have a football/soccer match on tv and one team is in red, the other in blue - then the two teams will be identical on b/w screens, but that is the choice of the viewer, not the publisher (here: broadcaster). I can think about some of these situations in advance and try to design accordingly, but i can never-ever avoid that some users will be overruling my beautifully crafted layout simply because they choose to. And they should indeed be allowed to.
The beauty of standards-compliant code is that it will work in almost all browsers. It will not necessarily look the same. There's an important difference here: The form is not the same as the function and the two things should not be confused. The stylesheet of the page defines the way it should look (unless overruled by other stylesheets or lack of support for such sheets) and the code (html, asp, php, etc.) defines how it should work.
[edited by: claus at 1:20 pm (utc) on Sep. 8, 2003]
Folks don't feel the "need" to upgrade their browsers, they feel the need to browse the web
People don't need to upgrade telephone equipment, they need to make calls.
People don't need to upgrade from turntables, they need to listen to music.
People don't need to get FM radio, they just need to listen to the radio.
People don't need to buy new tires, they just have to get where they're going.
Of course, no one needs to browse the web either. Life was perfectly fine 20 years ago when we went to the library for research and bought our goodies at the department store downtown.
Life moves on folks. If you still want to cling to antiques for your day-to-day activities that's fine, but don't expect the rest of the world to follow suit.
Artists don't release albums on vinyl anymore, FM has better signal and sound quality, tires with treads are safer than bald tires, and turning the crank on a telephone just doesn't cut it anymore. All will do the job, does that mean I have to cater to those technologies?
Artists don't release albums on vinyl anymore
Incorrect. I still see vinyl copies of some bands in the shops. Also most dance acts probably release 12-inch vinyl as it is the staple diet of DJs.
I think you've missed the point by several nautical miles: phone, turntables, etc are a poor analogy: they are stand alone pieces of equipment and the way they work ("the standard") hasn't changed in years. Telephones all work the same way: we don't get "please upgrade your phone to the latest version to talk to this person" messages. I would have thought this was blindingly obvious...? ;)
A more appropriate comparison for vinyl -> CD would be Gopher -> Web: the advantages are immediately obvious to normal people.
BTW I'm tired of geek hubris, but i try to keep a lid on it ;)
This is (yes it is) exactly the same with that old hypertext markup language. It hasn't changed in years and you really don't need to upgrade your browser just to see this or that page. New tags are around now, but the basics are still there and more recent equipment understand the old stuff as well (even gopher or ftp).
What has changed is the opportunity to create stunning designs on top of that html. That's something else and it's perfectly analogous to stereo or even quadro for that matter. It's styling (design), it's not function. Phones today come in small sizes that fit your pocket, and you can even send pictures through 'em but the basic html and content (the speech) can pass through all models.
/claus
[edited by: claus at 1:37 pm (utc) on Sep. 8, 2003]
Telephones all work the same way: we don't get "please upgrade your phone to the latest version to talk to this person"
That is my point exactly. And why do all phones work the same way? Not because some quasi-agency set a "standard" but because AT&T had a monopoly on phone service for a long time.
Like it or not, IE is the de facto standard for web browsers and, good or bad, all browsers need to work the same way. They need to handle scripting the same way, they need to render tags the same way they need to serve pages the same way.
Then, once that "standard" is applied across the board, browser makers can juice up their product with gimmicks like mouse gestures, etc.
But this nonsense of coding one way for Netscape and another for Opera and another for IE has got to go.
Like it or not, IE is the de facto standard for web browsers and, good or bad, all browsers need to work the same way. They need to handle scripting the same way, they need to render tags the same way they need to serve pages the same way.
Nonsense. It is IE that has to catch up with the other browsers by adhering to the W3C defined standards, not their own (missing tags out, not implementing all CSS, giving us broken box and float models, no full PNG support etc etc etc). Microsoft would love everyone to follow their browser and in the past this seemed a good idea. Now we know better.
The customer is less and less likely to be using a desktop PC running Windows and IE. What about Mac users? Mobile users? PDAs? Up and coming appliances? If they all follow the W3C standard, our pages will be fine.
But this nonsense of coding one way for Netscape and another for Opera and another for IE has got to go.
Couldn't agree more. Code for standards and you code for all browsers.
you really don't need to upgrade your browser just to see this or that page
You mean you shouldn't have to upgrade your browser ;)
content (the speech) can pass through all models
That's right. It hasn't stopped innovation in telecoms equipment. To get a new feature, folks have to buy new equipment. If the new feature is perceived as needed by customers they'll upgrade all on their own. If not they'll ignore it, and re-education campaigns will have a limited, if any, effect.
If [browsers] all follow the W3C standard, our pages will be fine.
*IF* they did, which currently none fully do...
Code for standards and you code for all browsers.
Argh! No! Code for standards and you code for all standards-supporting browsers. Which is currently er, none. And certainly not the most popular browser. Plus w3c-valid code can even crash some browsers or be unreadable. Your statement is profoundly misleading for newbie webmasters.
It would be nice if validation did mean that your code worked in all browsers, but this is *absolutely* not the case. Even new PDA browsers have questionable standards support eg the danger hiptop standards fiasco.
The customer is less and less likely to be using a desktop PC running Windows and IE
Wishful thinking, I fear...;)
The customer is less and less likely to be using a desktop PC running Windows and IE. What about Mac users? Mobile users? PDAs? Up and coming appliances? If they all follow the W3C standard, our pages will be fine
My last arguments on this subject.......my fingers hurt.
I disagree more. Macintosh sales have dropped year after year. While I agree it is a superior operating system, their market share is continually eroding.
Linux as a desktop PC OS is many years away. While Linux is gaining ground as a server OS, most people won't be browing casually from their enterprise server.
For mobile, PDA, phones, etc. I don't see a valid reason why those devices need to be able to see "regular desktop" web pages. A screen the size of a post-it note can't deliver the same content as a desktop screen, and why would users expect it to? Mobile,PDA,phones, etc. should have special versions of the site for those devices. It's unreasonable to expect to read the NY Times on a mobile phone. When I had a Blackberry, the NY Times, and other built in sites had special PDA versions, which was just fine. When I visited sites that had only the regular version of the website, I didn't complain to the site designer that their site didn't work on my itty-bitty screen.
Uma.
Macintosh sales have dropped year after year. While I agree it is a superior operating system, their market share is continually eroding.
Do you have proof or is it just an opinion? Certainly in countries like America, there are a lot of Mac users. It's the same argument as catering for Netscape 4 - do you ignore them completely, or learn how to make your site work on Macs too. Again, if the code is standards-compliant enough, you won't have a problem. But when sites use code that ONLY works in IE, then content can go missing, layouts can look very strange. I saw this only today on a site that was partly unusable on Mozilla. The coder obviously only cared about IE.
No, actually i mean it quite literally. Speaking as a user only and not a developer, you don't have to. I can perfectly fine surf the web using a browser like lynx with no image support, no flash support, no javascript support and (needless to say) no css support. Some pages will not work at all, but really, as a user there's plenty of alternative pages to choose from. With graphical browsers, otoh, my strongest incentive for upgrading is security. It's not to be able to view things that the old browser displayed "wrongly" it's because bugs and exploits are found all the time. So i do upgrades and patches. But i know that a lot of people rely on their anti-virus, firewalls, and other stuff in stead.
Then, speaking as a developer, i know that every single incremental release of the same version of the same browser is just a little bit different than the other ones. And i know that the same incremental release is just a little bit different in the english version than it is in the german, french, spanish, japanese....
And then there are all the other browsers, all their different versions and incremental versions, bug-fixes and localized editions. Plus the customized editions. There's no objective, neutral way for a developer to relate to this... "so, in NN4 it looks identical, but then what about NN4.7? ..ah, the english NN4.7 can, but then what about build002452? ..on the mac? ..the bulgarian version?" Then, when you've finally fixed the bulgarian and the kanji version as well, some moron that's usually a boss comes around with his own particular operating system or screen settings (not even related to the browser version) that completely destroys it anyway. By that time your fixed-price project yields a hourly rate very close to zero.
I find it a complete waste of time to make sure all these millions of combinations (browser+os+screen+other stuff) will display my page in an identical fashion. I tell potential customers this, and i will point them to the competition if they insist. I will not be the next <beep> to code a solution like the one Marshall mentioned.
In stead i make standards compliant code. One stylesheet, one set of html markup, in most cases not even different styles for different browsers. It's a simple yes or no - either it validates or it simply doesn't. It's measurable. Did i deliver or didn't i? It also means that i have to compromize - i'll never get the exact same shade of brown or the exact same spacing between my divs/rows/columns, and i can't use pngs and all that, but i'll just have to get used to it - in fact, i am already and i'm actually glad about it as well.
I know some browsers will **** up my design. The browsers will do that. It's their fault, not mine. They'll still be able to use the page in close to all cases though.
>> and i can't use pngs and all that
I might elaborate. It is an arrogant attitude i have when i say "one size fits all", i know that. I do make some choices though. I'd love to use pngs and i can make valid code using them, but i refrain from it. I also refrain from X(HT)ML although it can validate perfectly fine. Just like i refrain from excessive use of javascript, and for the time being flash. Oh, and the css "blink" and "marquee" things as well.
I just keep the set of tools that i use at some reasonable level. I do not use all the latest bells and whistles. By keeping it simple (and a bit behind what's technically possible) i can make stuff that works perfectly fine, validates, and keeps me from the headaches of viewing equipment differences. It can even get quite advanced, as long as you know and accept that what will work in the same way in two different browsers might look entirely different. And of course, the really advanced stuff should be done serverside, but that's rarely design issues.
/claus
[edited by: claus at 4:35 pm (utc) on Sep. 8, 2003]
I find the telephone analogy interesting. What other medium do you know where a person on a cell phone in NYC can call via radio signals to a base connected with fiber opics, to a switching station using copper wire, to a pole in the midwest, and ultimately talk to someone with a 1920’s candlestick phone. Should we as designers be able to do that?
Of course not, you have to upgrade the phone or get additional equipment. And web browsers are no different.
That is my point exactly. And why do all phones work the same way? Not because some quasi-agency set a "standard" but because AT&T had a monopoly on phone service for a long time.Like it or not, IE is the de facto standard for web browsers and, good or bad, all browsers need to work the same way. They need to handle scripting the same way, they need to render tags the same way they need to serve pages the same way.
1) Microsoft never had a monopoly on web browsers.
2) AT&T created its standards for telephones from scratch. Microsoft had adopted someone else's HTML and CSS standards and altered it to suit themselves.
Microsoft never had a monopoly on web browsers.
The US Dept of Justice thought otherwise.
(Please don't take this as an opportunity to list how great various browsers are :) If they are that great why aren't folks upgrading at a faster rate?)
Caller ID, Call back etc are good analogies: the html equivalent would be tables, forms, ssl etc - all with clear benefits to the user - unlike say, xhtml support.
[onetruefit.com...]
- be sure to use the bottommost link.
/claus
Hence it should be possible to access a page using any browser if everyone built well behaved sites, but that isn't the case, so currently if folks want as few incompatibilities as possible when browsing, they use the de-facto standard: IE.
[edited by: mattur at 6:04 pm (utc) on Sep. 8, 2003]
But I didn't see the link on the fancy site to the barebones site.
Did I miss it somewhere?
