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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.
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.
I think you are in the very small minority of people that care about Netscape 4.
I disagree with most of your points above. You can force people to upgrade. When their old obsolete products are no longer supported, they will have to upgrade. They can keep driving their Gremlins and Pacers, but don't expect to buy parts for them at Napa.
There is no "high cost of upgrading" as all the upgrades for the various browsers are free. It cost the government more to put NN4 on XP than to download the new version 7, or just use the IE that came with the product pre-installed.
Netscape 4 needs to die out, and it won't while people keep pandering to that small minority of users.
We're predominantly BtoB, design firm that has 400+ web clients that track the same...
Whatever it's worth; there is a F500 company that refuses to migrate...
We had a discussion some weeks ago in which i convinced myself (if nobody else) that the general level of NN4 (especially the 4.7 i think) was around 1-2%... BUT that it might be higher for certain niches.
Your post confirms the latter. 30% is a very large share. Libraries, scools, etc. do not change browser software as often as others. Even some large(ish) firms don't do it.
/claus
I feed them the @import so they see my site in outline form, something Netscape 4 users probably prefer anyway.
So not even Yahoo inclusion is a valid excuse.
I'm doing a can-can on Netscape's grave even as you read this.
As for forcing people to upgrade, if a person visits your site and it states “must
be viewed in whatever version such-and-such or higher, and they cannot access
your site, they will go to another. Free or not, who is going to sit through a 20 or
30 megabyte download just to see a page. It may be free, but as the adage
goes, “time is money” and I know if it was not for the fact I have more than one
computer so I can work on one while something is downloading on another, I
would not take the time.
Just food for thought.
And a browser is much less that 20 or 30 megs. Most are no more than 15mb. And if you ditch the Java support they are around 8 - 10 MB.
When Netscape was showing as 5% of visitors across my sites, I held the view that I needed to comply. I would be happy for a 5% increase in visitors, so I should be worried about losing 5% of them.
I have changed my mind now.
Traffic on my sites shows NS4.* as being around 2%.
My guess is that the NS4.7 figures also overlap with the small percentage who still use 640*480.
When I put in conversion tracking on one NS4.* compatible site the conversions from the netscape users were virtually zero.
Yep - it depends on your market, but for most of my sites I am no longer considering NS4.* as significant.
if they cannot access
your site, they will go to another.
good riddance. They would most likely be high-maintenance visitors as well, to support their crummy browser.
Every piece of software comes with a "system requirements" label. If you want the latest game your computer needs to be able to run it. Don't blame the programmer that you can't run the software.
Deal with it and upgrade.
Marshall is saying users in his niche are using nn4 in significant numbers. Sounds fair enough to me.
I would rather try to communicate the reason of the site in a method they can get ..
than try to educate and or upgrade 30% of my target users about pointless browser wars.
The point of my clients communication aims is rarely to get users to fiddle with their computers with all the hassle that usually brings :-)
Marshall is saying users in his niche are using nn4 in significant numbers. Sounds fair enough to me.
Hey, you're right, we did kind of stray off-topic. For Viagra, gambling, or hearing aid sites, it's 100% NS 4.7 compatibility! :)
So when our office upgrade to Windows XP, we had to install Netscape 4.
I'd have used the default browser IE6. Why install something inferior? After a day of use, your users would most likely prefer IE anyway. If not, tell them about all the sites that no longer support Netscape 4, or all the extras IE6 can do.
Their site fit that bill. it was after all a simple threaded forum, totally simple, not like this one with stickymail, moderated groups, etc. So it worked.
I left because every comment posted by the owner of the site was on the order of:
your fixed-width table makes me scroll in my 650px screen.
verdana is not an acceptable web-font
site must totally function without javascript
doesn't conform to W3C standards
etc. etc. etc.
I would watch perfectly good sites ask for a critique only to be destroyed because it didn't work in Lynx or on the owner's 12" monitor in whatever bogus browser he claims to be his browser of choice.
I finally submitted a very professional site from a 20 year old web company for a critique and sure enough, it was orn to shreds because it didn't work in Lynx, etc. etc. but it was a beauty of a functional site.
If you want all websites to look and work the same way, fine, support antique software. That BBS will work just as good on Lynx as it does on IE3 as it does on Mozilla.
And duct tape will get you out most emergency situations. Ships in a harbor are safe, but that's not what ships are built for.
If time is money, they will update their equipment so they don't have to keep going to the next site.
I have nothing against netscape, but I think it's time to "let it die".
Jordan
1- MS bundles Netscape 4 with windows XP.
2nd has to deal with my day job and why we had to install Netscape 4. My day job is being a cop. Actually, I’m the Chief of Police of a small municipality in Pennsylvania. Obviously then, I deal with a lot of governmental web sites. It is for that reason I had to install NN4. One site, which is used by all police departments, REQUIRES and only accepts NN4 and nothing else. I’m not sure the reason other than possibly less vulnerability than IE. Now consider these facts: In PA there are over 1,200 police departments with computers. Nationwide, I can only estimate. All these computers MUST use NN4 to access this particular site I am referring to, as well as some others. This fact also applies to other non-police agencies. For whatever reason, many governmental sites require NN4. So now you have thousands of computers using NN4 regardless of the users’ preference. One step further - if a person using one of these computer surfs the web at work, they will be using NN4 through no fault of their own.
Regardless of any numbers, or reason, there are still a significant number of NN4 users, like it or not. And until the government changes their criteria, thousands and thousands of computer users will have no choice but use NN4. Maybe I am more sensitive to this fact due to my position. Don’t mean to offend anyone.
imho opinion every market is different and requires its own considerations. Well done for not having been browbeaten by the must have the latest thing crowd.
If it works for your clients .. it works for your clients.
End of story.
I'm not comparing IE to NN4 - there's no comparison. My preference is IE, but this should not preclude the fact a lot of people still use NN4.
And Mark_A, thanks for the support.
If roughly 30% of my stats show NN4 users, does this not mean that 30% of the internet users still use NN4? If, let's say, 30% of all the fuel sold in the US was diesel, does this not suggest that 30% of all vehicles are diesel powered?
No, I don't think that's a good analogy. It's more like this: 30% of all the vehicles coming into one particular fuel station are buying diesel. You can't assume anything about a nation-wide percentage from that fact. There could be many reasons, including no diesel fuel sold anywhere else in the area.
But it's simply not true that 30% off all internet users are using Netscape 4 - too big a leap of inference, plus there's a lot of solid data (from ISPs and so on) showing that it's more like 1%-3%.
I have a few clients where NN4 use is pretty high (though not 30% - sheesh!) One common reason is a lot of access from small to medium enterprises in a particular niche. And those SMEs often have a one man IT deparment that has no resources to test and upgrade the network to a more modern browser. That one person is just flat out trying to keep the company network stable as it is.
Would you call such a business cheap? or perhaps just prioritizing things differently in a tight economy.
Don't forget, NN 4.8 was just released last fall. It surprised a lot of people, but there was a market for it.
[edited by: tedster at 10:12 am (utc) on Sep. 4, 2003]
Would you call such a business cheap? or perhaps just prioritizing things differently in a tight economy.Don't forget, NN 4.8 was just released last fall. It surprised a lot of people, but there was a market for it.
Tedster - My point exactly. Thank you.
Now consider these facts: In PA there are over 1,200 police departments with computers. Nationwide, I can only estimate. All these computers MUST use NN4 to access this particular site I am referring to, as well as some others. This fact also applies to other non-police agencies. For whatever reason, many governmental sites require NN4. So now you have thousands of computers using NN4 regardless of the users’ preference. One step further - if a person using one of these computer surfs the web at work, they will be using NN4 through no fault of their own.
Here's how I see it. First off, on a personal level I do take offense when people are jumped on for being different or thinking differently. Just a personal values thing and philosophically supporting people's right to personal choice or preferences - even if they were to choose to use NN4.7. And I happen to know a few people who do - they love the mail client, are used to it and like the homepage - and it's not my business or anyone else's what they surf with, any more than it would be if they still wore polyester pants suits from the 70's.
I see about 2% Netscape and I still test to make sure sites I have any say over are to even some extent viewable with NN4.7 - with CSS and JS disabled. Just out of respect for people, whoever they are and whatever their choices or preferences may be.
But all those people referenced who work at ALL those Government installations - if they come to an ecom site then they are shopping. Those are potential buyers. That's targeted traffic with credit cards, probably in a hurry because they're on their lunch hour.
Great! That's 2% I can accommodate if I have anything to say over the site who cannot shop at other sites or will not because they're annoying to them. That gives an edge with those people, and they're likely to come back. If there's one sale even occasionally that'll net $5 profit - that still buys 5 pounds of calamari or a trip to Starbucks.
That's interesting. That site is essentially forcing the users to use a certain browser. It's not user demand, or how secure the old browsers are for the individual machines requesting information, it's a block on requests from anything not being one specific model.
Do you have any clue about what it is that makes them suspect that NN4 is safer than other browsers? I have not heard that NN4 should support any specific protocols or other features that are not also supported by other browsers, so i'm a bit curious as to if there's something i haven't noticed. I suspect that it's just a question about clearance; that the more recent browsers haven't been approved yet, as this takes some manpower and time... but this is really not the proper way to do things when it's about the internet, i'll tell you why:
Normally, older browsers (and in this respect one year is old) will have lots of security holes. These security holes are security holes affecting the PC the browser is installed on, not the servers holding the web page that the PC user wants to see. This is the primary reason that you (as a user or network admin) would always want to upgrade browsers and install patches everytime they become available. Not doing this is simply gambling with the security of your PC(s).
Yes. I'm, saying that this page is actually a security breach. Bad people out there will know how to abuse the NN4s. This has no influence on that specific page or the servers holding it, but it has influence on all the thousands of individual PC's where that old browser is installed.
So, they'e basically saying: Our page is safe (at least we think so,) we don't give a d*** about the PC's of our users, just let them remain unsafe. And, really, there's some irony here, as their page is not more safe because of the browser restriction. I find it very hard to believe that NN4 has more security features than more recent models, that is.
It might be suspected that the information located on that server is more "secured" by allowing access to one browser type only, but really this is not the case, there's just more control. I know that you can't have security without control, but on the other hand it's fairly easy to have control without security.
Bad guys have NN4s too, and perhaps even (in the extreme case) the very ones installed on the good guys' machines. So, security is not really a valid argument - the way to go in this case would be to implement VPN and strong encryption, and that's completely browser-independent. Then, if it has to be really secure, you would just build a specific User-Agent (a browser-type application of some kind) that could only talk to this specific page or server. Again, that's something completely different.
Marshall, there's probably not a lot you can do about it as an individual. But the people that provide that web service are really not doing you a favour, and they are in fact putting the PCs used by you and your your colleagues at risk whenever these specific browsers are used to surf the internet outside that specific page.
Advice? Well, install new browsers, secure ones. The Opera, or Mozilla seems like good choices as Microsoft has recently announced that development on IE as a standalone application will terminate, and Netscape has done so too. Then, remind the people that you are working with, that the NN4 browsers should only be used to access that specific page and nothing else on the internet. I think it's safe to assume that this page can be trusted but i would not say that about all the pages on the web.
/claus
As already mentioned, every market has its own demographics which need addressing.
For my personal 'information' sites I choose not to address the 2% that use NS4.* simply because I can churn our more pages quicker if I don't have to worry about them. I am making extensive use of css both for layout and as part of the search engine optimisation process. I still have thousands of pages to produce on my current projects, once I complete them, I 'might' go back and produce a style sheet that is compatible with NS4.* - I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Sure, someone else might have done it differently - but this works for me and my market
If I were selling scientific instruments, or laboratory equipment I would design for NS4.* from the ground up.
Its down to knowing your market - which clearly you do.
Obviously then, I deal with a lot of governmental web sites. It is for that reason I had to install NN4
Every government website I've came across hasn't been much of a problem in more modern browsers.
One site, which is used by all police departments, REQUIRES and only accepts NN4 and nothing else. I’m not sure the reason other than possibly less vulnerability than IE.
Probably designed during the mid to late 90s and hasn't been touched since. But it sounds like it could use a major overhaul to allow more modern browsers to access it. Perhaps it's time to start complaining to whoever is maintaining that site.
Does this make sense. If roughly 30% of my stats show NN4 users, does this not mean that 30% of the internet users still use NN4?
Absolutely not. Most site statistics I'v seen have NS4 at 2% or lower with anything over 5% considered extraordinarily high. On one site I help maintain, we measured NS4 at less then 1% with 4% for Mozilla/Netscape 7 (I'm still working on last months statistics). It is because of these low numbers that many webmasters have stop supporting NS4 beyond giving it the very basics.
If a website does not get much traffic then that 2 to 5 percent makes a difference to some degree.
If a website gets lots of traffic the that 2 to 5 percent can be a very large number of users.
Okay, thanks :) I know that there's laws in the US regulating the encryption issue slightly different than here in Europe so i'm used to having it in my browsers but i didn't realize that NN was first, thanks a lot - it makes good sense now.
Still, i would consider to use other browsers outside that particular site.
/claus
