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I'm starting a redesign now with more CSS and less hard coding. One page is done and just for grins.......in NN 4.79 it's unusable. Select boxes just don't work - period.
And I'm not going to bother fixing it! I'm telling the users that if they want to use netscape they need to download 6.0 or newer. I won't even let them into the site with 4.X anymore. It's just not worth my time.
It mostly works in Opera 6.0, but not everything. I can fix for that, but I don't think I have one customer using opera. Mostly IE and the occasional NN.
Enough ranting.
>>I don't think I have one customer using opera
Of course! How could you have one if the site doesn't functioning well, or have some visual bugs?
I don't think that such a site is a proper presentation of a good service/products supplier.
This piece of code detects Opera regardless it's identification:
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Opera") !=-1)
// this is Opera
What browsers do you develop for?
I humbly ask the following as a newbie that doesn't jet know javascript:
In your post above, you mention the problem with NN 4.x was with javascript. Without knowing your site nor what you were using javascript for, in retrospect, do you think you could have -- or could not have -- achieved the same functionality without using javascript?
Would a tool like Dreamweaver that allows you to target a certian browser level have produced javascript that would work OK in NN 4.x?
Would targeting a given version of javascript -- say version 1.2 -- eliminate the problems with NN 4.x?
Moreover, how did you fix the problems? By changing the javascript, using some other tool or method instead of javascript, or just dropping whatever functionality you were using javacript for that gave NN 4.x troubles on the site?
Much thanks from the javascript newbies (i.e. future javascript victims),
Louis
You do all this by using JavaScript references to the elements you want to change. As your page loads into the browsers, your browser creates a hypothetical thing called a Document Object Model (DOM) that is basically a heirarchical map of all the elements in your page. You then use JavaScript to reference an object in the DOM and change one of the object's properties (object properties are basically equivalent to element attributes).
Unfortunately each browser (and browser version) builds its DOM in a different way. Therefore you need to use different JavaScript syntax to reference the DOM according to which browser your user has. So typically you'll ask the browser a couple of questions to determine which browser it is (this is known as browser sniffing) and then use "if" and "else if" statements to execute one bit of code for one browser and another bit of code for another browser. This way you can reference the different DOMs for the different browsers in different ways to get the same result for all of them.
The problem with NN4.x is simply that it's DOM (and the way you reference it) isn't very good. That browser is now very old, and to be honest a bit buggy and unpredictable. You can do most simple stuff with it, but if you try to do tricky stuff, or do more than one simple thing at a time, it can break your page.
NOTE: There is another DOM: the one that W3C says all browsers should use. Netscape 6+ (almost) uses this DOM.
txbakers said:
And I'm not going to bother fixing it! I'm telling the users that if they want to use netscape they need to download 6.0 or newer. I won't even let them into the site with 4.X anymore. It's just not worth my time.
I don't think txbakers actually knows what it would take to fix the site. txbakers took the brave step and dropped support for NS4.x
Personally, I wish more people would come to this decision! Way to go tx!
:)
Well, as txbakers said, we should design for the web, not for a particular browser.
I personally always try to support as many browsers as I can. These are: NN4, IE5, Mozilla and Opera.
In case of Opera (my lovely one, the browser I use every day for about 3 years already) it v.6 - but if the project doesn't require some complex scripting and DOM games, there's no any reason that it shouldn't work in Opera 5 as well.
In case of NN4, ALL basic javascript should work. I don't like those layers/DHTML things that were so popular once, and try to aviod it so I don't need to spend much time to make it functioning exactly the same an all browsers (including NN4). But, due to my experience, 95% of all cases does not require there things at all! I speak about real online projects, where all experimental things are useless and sometimes even harmful.
Using standard DOM is the key of simple and powerful scripting for IE5+, Opera 6 (O5 as well, with exceptions) and all Gecko-based browsers (Mozilla, N6+, etc). And usually there's no need in any browser detection at all - except the statement:
if (document.getElementById) { ... }
Browser detection is needed only for old IE4 and NN4 that use proprietary non-standard object model and methods to manipulate it, and are not capable of going the standard way.
>>NN7 uses more of the IE DOM and renders correctly.
That's not correct. All Gecko-based browsers (with N7 being one of them) use standard W3C DOM. As newer IE does (or at least tries to do), by the way. That the way Opera goes too (though DOM support is very limited - but is sufficient in most cases; full DOM support is promised in upcoming O7).
As for design (I deal with professional designs) - everything should look the same in all browsers, without any exceptions. There's no any excuse that something should look different in some browser.
That's the policy we follow, and I think that it is the right one.
Yes, I did miss that he did give his solution. My mistake. That will teach me to post late at night/early in the morning when I've been at the computer *way* too long and should go to bed instead -- I hope!
Moreover, thanks one and all for sharing!
One thing I'll share is that the large bank I work for has NN 4.7X as their official browser that everyone must use and program for when doing web development. It's the only one permitted to be used to access the internet. I think the reason is security. NN 4.7X, years ago was given the green light -- and no other browser has been given the green light to be installed yet (I think due to security reasons). Not my decision; I just work there and must abide by what they allow to be used.
The web development group (of which I am not a part at present) does use javascript as a big part of their development, along with JSP. I'm not sure what if any problems they run into. My guess is they code to javascript 1.2 -- but I could easily be mistaken.
FWIW,
Louis
I don't think txbakers actually knows what it would take to fix the site
I most certainly do know what it will take to adapt the code to work in NN 4, having done it once before. This time around, I don't want to spend the 120 hours pandering to an obsolete piece of software.
NN 4.7X as their official browser that everyone must use and program for when doing web development
If this were my situation, I would only program to 4.7X as well. But since I'm not in that situation, I don't feel the need to limit my programming.
I'm not sure if it's clear - but I'm not talking about basic website design. The HTML produced is all valid across browsers. But I'm not writing basic web sites. This is a highly complex web based application. Think Turbo Tax as an example. If people want to use that program, they'll need cookies and JS enabled along with a browser new enough to read the advanced scripting.
