Dave, Excellent post. I've always taken what I called the "Amazon litmus test". It was a known fact that Amazon coded all portions of their site in a manner that was viewable in very early verisons of Netscape. This ensured that they never lost a customer because of a browser compatibility issue. That was something that really appealed to my business side and still does to a great extent. This process though does restrain your ability to truly leverage some of the amazing advances in browser technologies.
Recently, I was working on a site where I used some styles to enhance the look and feel of inputs, textareas and buttons. The effect was very modern and clean. The pages rendered beautifully under IE 5.5 and NS 6.2 but failed miserably when brought up under NS 4.7. It was extremely frustrating to say the least especially since the code was W3C compliant. I verified this thinking that perhaps I had used some IE-centric approach. I think we're all in agreement, to some extent, that maintaining some level of backward compatibility is in everyone's best interest but I'd like your feedback on something else. What do you use as your baseline for browser compatibility? Is it NS 4.7? In other words, when you decide your minimum browser requirements, which browser versions do you choose as the starting point? Thanks again, Rey... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Carabetta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "CF-Talk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2002 11:55 PM Subject: Re: Is the Netscape browser still a consideration? > I would most definitely continue to develop for Netscape 4.x browsers. I > feel that it is very short-sighted to make any "assumptions" about what your > users are viewing your web site with unless you run some extensive logging > that captures browser info (i.e., BrowserHawk, etc.) and do some analysis. > > I have to be honest, whenever I've seen code (and there are exceptions to > this) that works well in IE and bombs in Netscape, a lot of the time it's > because of shoddy coding (missing closing table tags, etc.), where IE is > much more forgiving. If you stick with W3C compliant code, most of the time > you will be fine in both major browsers. Obviously there are exceptions such > as IFrames, various elements of the DOM, and other nuances that Microsoft > has extended beyond W3C standards or Netscape just chose not to implement. > But I would wager that a majority of web sites out there don't use those > exclusive elements if they generate a lot of traffic. As mentioned in a > previous reply, most customers would just leave and never come back to your > site. And if you do use these exclusive elements, there's probably a > workaround if you think hard about the problem. I think that coders (myself > included at times) love to take the easy way out. That's not necessarily a > bad thing, but the wrong solutions get applied to certain problems just > because "it's quicker." > > Up-and-coming browsers (Opera, Mozilla, etc.) are fully W3C compliant, and > that's where your focus should be. I always make sure to test my code in IE, > Netscape 4.7, and Opera, and do so on different OSes. Remember that IE on a > Mac renders different than IE on a Windows platform at times. Also think > about XHTML, which is just a re-named version of the W3C's HTML 4.01 spec. > Some things take getting used to, but you'll find that you code cleaner and > more efficiently, and, most importantly, make your code scalable for > potential XML integration down the road. > > Sorry to ramble, but Rey, I think you brought up a very good point. I, too, > look forward to what other people's thoughts are on this subject. > > Regards, > ______________________________________________________________________ Get Your Own Dedicated Windows 2000 Server PIII 800 / 256 MB RAM / 40 GB HD / 20 GB MO/XFER Instant Activation � $99/Month � Free Setup http://www.pennyhost.com/redirect.cfm?adcode=coldfusionb FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
