Hi Nick, We successfully moved NN4 off our primary support list a couple of years ago, despite the lingering in-house installs due to NN4 once upon a time being the standard browser.
My thoughts on your situation.... > I have a requirements document here that I'm quoting for, that > mentions that the web site should be optimised for IE4 and Netscape 4. Does it actually say "optimised"? I'm guessing yes. We convinced people that you should "optimise" for browsers which are current market leaders. Note that doesn't say "most common", just "market leaders" :) > I would like to educate them on why > supporting these dinosaurs is not a good idea. To be honest, don't get too hung up on actually getting them to Believe In Better Browsers, since the people who make decisions and hold the purse strings generally don't really care. They might like to feel good, but they'll skip that if they have to. Wording is your friend here. We used phrases like "legacy browsers will be supported through graceful degradation". Meaning you are still supporting NN4 - just in a particular way. This is like car companies who stock parts for old models for decades, since there are still a few people out there driving the vehicles. Semantics are your friend - you're not saying anything about NN4 being good or bad, just that it's a "legacy" browser. Most managers understand that means "it might even have been shit-hot once, but now it's behind the times and we're just letting it run out its life". Meanwhile you've used two very positive words - "supported" and "graceful". Avoid using negative words since managers might latch on to them. If questioned you can talk about different browsers offering "more efficient protype and development paths" but be very careful going down that path - you might get caught supporting the *most popular* browser. A potentially winning argument is quoting two prices: one to build a site which works "normally" in NN4/IE4; and one which supports those browsers via graceful degradation. Since the graceful degradation price is likely to be quite significantly lower, they might vote with their budget. If the site has any form of secure content you can also talk about the encryption support, or lack of it, in old browsers. This argument alone can send IE4/5.0 flying off the support list faster than you can say "privacy breach" and "litigation". None of this is foolproof though and you can get caught out playing this game - there is always the risk that they'll misinterpret what you're saying and tell you to "just support the most common browser" and you're in IE6 hell. So... I hope this helps; and I feel your pain :) cheers, h -- --- <http://cheshrkat.blogspot.com/> --- The future has arrived; it's just not --- evenly distributed. - William Gibson ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
