Web designers, do you feel that having to support older browsers is a must

[Deja Q]

(starting a clean thread)

Having fiddled more with Netscape 4.08 :puke: and 4.78 :puke: I'm seeing how it differs from IE and later versions, which I prefer to use. Marquees won't work :eyes: and in order for a table cell/row to have the assigned background color appear, you need to have a space or a text character in the cell! :silly: Also, DIV entries inserted by frontpage wreak havoc on ancient netscrape as well.

A pity it can't handle dynamic images (e.g. setting the width size to "100%" rather than a static #)

I managed to get some of my designs to appear normal under Netscape (especially the best of the bunch), and I'll substitute the nimble marquee tag for some bloaty external javascript if my client wants the scrolling text to be there.

Not to endorse frontpage, it loves adding redundancies to font tags, especially when I'm trying to use CSS instead... sigh.

I will try Dreamweaver 2004 MX 30 day trial, though some people from amazon.com don't dig it because it's slooooow... it'll be useful for other clients as well should I ultimately buy it...

[DS1]

1. Make a browser detect script

Send them to a older-browser hatchet job version of the site, perhaps with a small image of what they could be seeing, and links to the latest and greatest options.

Netscape 4? Come on, that's so 98.

[Ready4Change]

2. One of my pet peeves.

It isn't that people aren't writing to support all browsers.

It's that people are writing for only ONE browser. Most often the culprit is web pages specialized for IE, and often for only one specific version of IE.

This forum, btw, does not display properly with the latest version of Apples Safari browser.

[DS1]

4. Well tough titties for Apple Safari

If they can't get DHTML compliant, at this date, they can jam it.

If all the browsers would just do what you tell them to, programming for other browsers wouldn't be an issue.

[ixion]

5. You should blame the browsers, not the developers

Many of us support web standards, but most browser companies don't support those same standards, which makes it very difficult to support all browsers, in anything but the most modest websites.

Where web applications are concerned, it becomes even more complex.

[BlueJazz]

3. I do a little Web designing even though...

I principally do network and computer repair.
I usually just ignore the outdated browsers and such...I mean, Geez, you
can download just about any modern browser on the web. I could understand (in the past) maybe a designer not wanting to "leave somebody out" in the viewing process but nowadays there's really no excuse to use a dinosaur Browser. (You can even get the new IE6 from those AOL disks they send out----in a folder on the disk). Shoot, if they're so lazy that they can't download a new browser, then they probably are to lazy to buy the product the Web-site is selling. :)

[lpbk2713]

6. Other .....

A lot of the decision depends on the demographic of the group you want to focus on. Older folks might have older computers and older browsers. Younger users just the opposite. Good luck.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

7. Other. Look in your logs

and design accordingly

[POed_Ex_Repub]

8. Here's how I see it

Go with what the majority of your users are going to use. You're always going to have a segment of people who want to use something else (and will complain loudly sometimes if you don't support their browser), however your time is better spent improving your site rather than making it compatible with every variation of browser out there.

To use a well worn cliche, you can't please all the people all of the time. Trying to is just going to frustrate you IMHO.

[ixion]

9. it is possible to write cross browser code

backwards compatible to IE5 and Mozilla 4.7. Previous versions support a version of javascript that was mildly retarded, had limited support for css and no support for xml.

That's one problem with not upgrading your browser. At some point, you really need to if you expect to be able to take advantage of new technology.

For example:
do your windows3.1 applications run on your windows 2K box?

[Deja Q]

10. Quite...

At this point, I've gotten NS 4.x 96% okay (just replace the marquee with javascript), with Mozilla/NS 6+/IE 4+/Opera working 100%.

Dunno about the KDE and GNOME browsers or the other sundry ones Mac uses; though I'd reckon that IE and Mozilla/Netscape/Opera on the Mac would look identical.

True on the Win 3.x/2k comparison though...