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What do you test with? Does anyone use 4 anymore?
This makes a big difference because my webpages test for Netscape, but not the different versions. And for any visitors using Netscape I greatly restrict features on my pages because 4 can't handle them. When 4 users go away I'll be able to do more with my pages like I do for Internet Explorer. (Actually, I wish Netscape would just go away!)
Thanks,
Peter
If someone tries to use my site with 4.7 and has problems, I tell them to upgrade or I refund their money.
I can't be bothered for the 6 or 7 people still using 4.7
In my experience, you get the tutors that love netscape (all 2 off them) and then everybody else hates it and uses the Windows Client via Unix so that they can use IE instead.
I think its safe to say that the majority of users using Netscape 4.7 expect things to look different and possibly not work. One thing to consider is that NS 4.7 users will also probably be running 256 colours or less.
Netscape 6 seemed to stick to the netscape "trend" as i put in, in that it wasn't very compatible, but 7 and even more 7.2 seems to cope with about anything you chuck at it. Whether this is because its more forgiving of bad code i don't know....
Anyway to answer your question I have IE6 IE5 NS4.7 Opera 6.something NS6 NS 7.2 and Mozilla 1.3b
I only really worry about IE 6 and NS 7.2 and Mozilla although if theres something wrong in Opera or earlier versions of NS then I'll fix it if it takes me less than 10 mins.
This is based on the fact that more than 95% of users use >= IE5.5
So dev time is shared similarly ;)
If your site is information based....I suggest making it work for that version of that browser.
I'm fortunate enough to have the professors/workers email me very quickly when something doesn't work.
... in which case, maybe it was Fireworks writing badly-formed or non-valid code?
You do check your pages using [validator.w3.org...] don't you.
I generally find that most problems caused seemingly by incompatible browsers, are not actually the fault of the browser, but the fault of the web page design software writing badly-formed or non-valid code.
I use Dreamweaver to construct web pages and you are correct they do not always vadilate, even though everything seems to render correctly in the browsers which you use for testing. Some one somewhere will see your site in a total different way than you designed it because they are using an earlier browser version.
Netscape 4.7 did not support .css so I use it to check for problems with nested tables. If you have text inside a nested table and also in the table which the nested table is in, it will only use the style sheet for the nested table, but use default font for any text which is not in a table
That is just one example there are lots of others
Netscape 4.7 did not support .css
That is a bit of an over-statment, you know ;)
I would say Netscape 4.7 has a lot of bugs in its CSS support. But they can be dealt with in many cases. For instance, I've found that placing <div></div> tags around a table - even though they are not *really* needed - often helps NN4 remember the declared styles. If you still need to support NN4, it is doable unless you get into heavy CSS-2.
However, the amount of work involved can get prohibitive unless you know you have a decent sized NN4 audience. One of my clients has about 7% NN4, and they make nearly 20% of the purchases, so I will hang in there with that one.
One can almost count on IE 6 & Mozilla to behave the same way when using 100% standards compliant code with a DTD that forces standards compliant interpretion of the code. I skipped supporting NS 4.x when NS 6 & Mozilla 1.0 were released, and based upon my weblog, at the end of 2002 i skipped supporting IE 4.x. One still has to make some css-tweaks due to the broken box-model in IE 5.x.
My Uni has skipped NS 4.x and is using Mozilla 1.1
netscape 7.02 and mozilla 1.3 (ie 6 and 5.5).
You just cant do the things u want to in older browsers.
Im totally of the mind that you must upgrade. And in terms of universities: some huge percentage of students have personal comps, and have a new browser. Its only when they are actually on campus when they are forced to use 4.7, and even then, they probably aren't browsing for "fun".
these are my test bed browsers, that i like to make sure of visual and functional attributes of the site work accross.
Just my two pence worth... ;-)
-gs
OK, I don't use flash and admittedly, my site is very straight forward (design wise) ... but still, why do webmasters take the attitude that they don't care if somebody with NN4 or 4.7 can access their site or not? Isn't the point of having a web site to get as much traffic as possible?
Matching this against my IE viewers the traffic is insignificant and not really worth my while running tests (again my site does not use flash or anything that relies to much on client-side processing.
Check the sad person still using Netscape 3.0 do they know that you can download things on the net? :)
-gs
How do you persuade someone who is over 80 years old to spend all of their money on a shiny new PC, rather than food?
How do you persuade someone who is over 80 years old
You don't.
You also accept the fact that he probably won't be visiting your site and get over it.
You can't expect 100% market share.
If it's a choice between a shiny new PC or food I'd recommend food. If he really wants to view a certain website he can go to the public library or local public school.
Certain resturants have dress codes. They exclude people without jackets. Certain restaurants have higher prices, they exclude poor people. Unless you want to be all things to all people, just realize that there will be some who will not be able to visit your site and move on.
I doubt I can get parts for a 74 Pacer any more either. If I insist on driving it that's my problem.
I have a PC with IE5 on it, but my other mahines have IE6
I'm just interested because i have recently seen a lot of activity for IE4 and was just wondering if there were any major probs...
Sorted!
For those interested in why I have four machines (I still haven't convinced the landlady who pays the electric bill ;) )
SPARCstation 5 (Solaris 8) Just because I can :) and Should realy learn something about
Dual P200 128MB Ram (Win 2000 Server) Proxy Server and Exact setup as my co-located web server, runs as my dev web server basically (This has IE5 on it for testing)
P3 800 256MB Ram (Win XP) This does my email, messenger, all the versions of the browsers i test. Runs Digiguide and anything that i want to view as i type on my main machine...
Duron 800 1024MB Ram (Win XP) machine I do all my work on, terminal to the SPAR and Server and general workhorse.
-gs
Maybe I'll have a look at these virtual PC thingies
I still can't believe theres not a better option though...
For that matter, anyone know how to get several different versions of NN (or IE for that matter) on the same system? Or, does anyone know of some program that will show you exactly how these various versions/programs would see the page?
Mozilla installs independantly of Netscape.
The only program that can truly show you what a site looks like using Netscape 4 is Netscape 4 itself; likewise for any other browser version that you care to mention you should use the real thing.
However, the trauma was so bad for me (and the production time I lost) that I now will not open two Mozilla-based browsers at the same time, whether Netscape, Moz itself, or Phoenix.
Can anyone assure me that these conflicts were actually and finally resolved?
And I can open all three at the same time without any problems other than then insiting they have a profile each. ie i just created three profiles and told them to get on with it...
Other than that, I can't say I have had any problems
Don't know that I did anything special though.
I removed it cos it was just too painful, and I now have Netscape 4.7 on my SPARC so there was no reason to clog up my XP install with it :)
