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Then the "Green-eyed Monster" rears its head... A touch of jealousy combined with the fear of being left behind becomes a strong motivational force. If the "Jones'es" have one... Well! We need to get one too! ;)
If only people talked about broswers while standing in "checkout lines" instead of cell phones and "2-way pagers!" :)
It's all good... do want you want; live with the consequences.
DVD comes with both a 5.1 soundtrack and a stereo soundtrack, so it will work with any receiver/TV. With a $29.99 RF adaptor, any TV can display DVDs.
If TV show producers looked at viewers the same way the anti-Netscape 4.x crowd does the "old-school" web surfers, 60% of the audience wouldn't tune in. We don't all have 16:9 aspect ratio HDTV with 5.1 surround sound.
Yes, I know browsers are free monetarily, but for your aunt Doris to spend 3 hours downloading a new browser just so she can see how cool your new DHTML website is can be absolutely torturous, especially if she lives in a rural area that has 75 year old copper phone lines that make connecting at 28.8 a cause for celebration.
The thing that 'gets my goat' about Netscape stuff is that it's hard to make it validate. Try adding a small bit of Flash -- and even the latest Netscape effort uses code that doesn't validate. DOH! It's this kind of ignorance on the part of the Netscape developers that really winds me up.
Only about 5-7% are using NN4.
I built my most recent site upgrade using CSS with IE visitors in mind. I layed out the code in an order that would be logical to the reader, and then used the css "import" statement instead of the "link" statement to link in the external CSS. This way, NN4 visitors will be able to see my site as simple plain text pages because NN4 does not recognize "import" for CSS. Although the pages don't look awesome to NN4, they are completely functional and I don't have to worry about watering down my CSS design for the 5% of visitors who haven't upgraded.
You can't compare TV with the web..for a start TV producers have NO control over the medium only the content. All web pages work on a monitor don't they?
Anyway, I dont see anyone churning out Beta-Max videos or the latest Brit. Spears on Vinyl or Laser Disc. Outdated technology is not always catered for in any field let alone web design.
A line has to be drawn somehere..the only argument is where?
Vinyl --> IN!!!
CD's suck for music. They are cheep and soulless. Netscape sucks for browsing, it’s old and buggy. _Inferior_ technology always looses, classic technology is always revived.
Just my (slightly OT) 2 pence worth :)
You are definately in an enviable position, one that I hope others will be able to enjoy before too much longer.
Out of curiousity, do you have any general stats regarding browser useage in your market? I'm wondering how Opera, Mozilla and NN6.x are faring around the globe.
Also IE6 is at a 32% penetration level globally. Is this reflected in your stats?
Once again, welcome aboard!
- papabaer
I just went off to check and the first site I found (which *barely* degrades to NN4) was this one [alistapart.com] <note>It's actually quite relative to this thread too so I'll link to it. </note>
The site actually states
"We don’t design for only one browser. We design for all browsers and devices by authoring to W3C recommendations including XHTML 1.0 Transitional and Cascading Style Sheets."but as you will see it is far from cross-browser in any NN4 sense.
Search for "A list apart" on Yahoo - bingo, number 1 result.
i'd also say that the time spent fixing sites to display properly in NN4 is not worth the additional income from the small number of potential additional customers. far better to spend that time on adding more products or more information to generate sales for the majority of users.
all the time people keep fussing over supporting NN4, people will keep using it and we will have to keep supporting it. if we (as a whole) stop supporting NN4, people will have to eventually upgrade to a decent browser and we can all cut development time.
and finally .... do those of you that develop for NN4 also develop for other minority browsers? do you develop for amiga browsers? webTV? opera? IE2? what about making your sites compliant with text only browsers and BOBBY / BETSIE?
i doubt it. NN4 compatibility is all a lot of unnecessary fuss over a nearly-dead browser.
Looking at the WebTrends log on one of our sites, I find the following: (Month of March, 2002)
Total # visitors = 8,593
IE = 7,728 (89.9%)
Netscape 4.x = 79 ( < 1%)
IE6 = 1,313 (15%)
No accurate stats on the constitution of the "other browsers" category (though we know the total is significantly less than 10%).
As for building for Bobby, etc., the sad fact is that the sort of social awareness you find in Western corporations just simply does not factor into business processes over here. With the exception of an NGO, in 5 years of Asia-Pac web work, I have never had a client concerned with the issue.
WebTV is also not a factor here. As for ancient browsers, the March log referenced above shows one incident of IE 3.01 -- that's it. Realize that two factors work in our (web designers) favor over here: (1) late adoption of technology means most platforms are relatively new and (2) Macs are too expensive! so we live in a development environment largely characterized by MS technology of recent origin.
var style;if (navigator.appName == "Netscape") {
if (navigator.appVersion.charAt(0) < "5") {
style = "<link rel='STYLESHEET' type='text/css' href='styles_nn4.css'>";
document.write(style);
} else {
style = "<link rel='STYLESHEET' type='text/css' href='styles.css'>";
document.write(style);
}
} else {
style = "<link rel='STYLESHEET' type='text/css' href='styles.css'>";
document.write(style);
}
Of course, you could also "go off on one" and write a tonne of branching functions in JS that account purely for NN4.x's DHTML "abnormalities", but it just isn't worth it in my opinion. I advise people to upgrade their favourite software to the newest version, but because a requirement of all my contracts to date, I still have to create NN4.x-friendly webpages...
It depends on the fact that NN4 doesn't support @import. First you bring in a Netscape 4 stylesheet with the standard <link> tag and next you cascade in all the changes required for more compliant browsers with an @import statement, which NN4 will not read but the intended browsers will, including NN6, Moz, IE and Opera.
My client percentages for NN4 are all over the map - from 5% to as high as 41% this month! Two new clients (one is a Mom and Pop, the other an engineering consultancy) are in the 30's.
So I'm feeling that NN4 may be with us much longer than I wanted - unless AOL really takes up the battle and raises awareness.
Anyone else got some top tips on softening the blow of potential Netscape 4.x problems?
AOL/Netscape must first stop offering NN4.x as an available download. This gives the wrong impression to more than a few who may believe that v.4 is simply a "less complicated," though fully functional, version of the newer v.6 software.
The NN4 download does not come with any disclaimers: "This version of Netscape Communicator does not support Web Standards, neither does it entirely support HTML 4.01. CSS support is limited. Many websites will not display properly. Use at your own risk."
Wake up Netscape/AOL - stop the madness!
I just created a new report in Nettracker to show me orders by browser type to see if the ratios were in keeping with trafic. The percentages are dead on. I was surprised to even see orders every month from IE 4.01.
If you make money from the sites productivity you can not ignore Netscape 4.x
