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I guess I assumed my designer would design a site that was accessible to most browsers. I never asked, and took it for granted that that is just something all designers do :(
To my horror... I find that my site is almost inaccessible to Netscape all together... and looks sloppy in older versions of IE.
What should I do? I am mad to say the least.
Personally, I would use dreamweaver or another WYSIWYG to fix it quickly. I would make sure that you make this part of the deal in the future. I would talk to the designer about it and see what they say.
Having worked with loads of designers and developers I choose to be almost anal when explicitly stating what browsers the site will work in.
Detailing it in a functionality spec so that it forms part of the contract will cover all parties once the site has been built.
For a developer: If a client turns around and says why doens't it work in netscape 4+, refer to spec, no confusion. Client pays if it has to work in netscape 4+.
For a client: If a client has stated, as part of the contract that the site should work in netscape 4, and doesn't, refer to spec, no confusion and the terms of the contract have not been fulfilled. Designer should fix.
I'd ask the same questions as Korkus. Is it all versions of netscape?
One thing I would think about doing, if possible, is seeing what your current audience is using by checking your log files and then make a decision on what to do next.
I have only recently made a decision to no longer cater for users of older versions of certain browsers (due to stats from log files and technical issues) but I still design with the small percentage of users in mind so that the site either degrades as well as possible or redirects to a browser upgrade page.
It actually displays better in 4.7 but the navigation menu doesn't display in either... all the tables are distorted... and the shopping cart, which is in asp, doesn't work at all... It plain looks awful in both.
What a bummer. My mother always said “assume means: to make a ass of you and me”
Netscape 6 (especially 6.0, also 6.1 but to a lesser extent 6.2) had a million and one problems. If your site uses JavaScript/DHTML, then you could waste years of your life getting it to all work perfectly in that browser, and it would cost you (as the client) a lot of money to the developer. As a result, virtually everyone that upgraded to Netscape 6 has now upgraded to Netscape 7. I get more WebTV users on my site than Netscape 6 users, which is why I don't explicitly support Netscape 6.
You should export the CSS to an external file and call it with instructions in the <head> section of the HTML file. Most people use this one, but it can cause problems:
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" src="/path/file.css">
It is better to use this slightly longer version of this, again placed in the <head> section of the HTML file:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">
<style type="text/css">
@import url(path/file.css);
</style>
This version hides the CSS from older versions of Netscape that cannot handle CSS. This stops those versions from displaying a corrupted page with overlapping elements.
Try this method. NS 4 users will get a very plain, unstyled page, but it will render very fast. So, such users get quite a good web experience as far as speed is concerned.
Ie is known for mercy
if the cart process credit card in one browser
the code per se should not be tied to the problem
again it has to do with the html echo part of it
I will have a few coders look at it, give an estimate
then go back to the original dev person
and ask for $ back in the amount needed for a fix
now as suggestred you should look at your contract wording
regards
