A few points regarding web sites and browsers: 1 - The oddball browsers matter because the web was always intended to be a platform-and-OS-neutral medium. Anything that encourages this, as the "oddball" browsers do, is good (and some of the "oddball" browsers have features/capabilities that some users may prefer).
2 - As others have pointed out, if your web site is in any way related to making money it *has* to be Internet Explorer compatible. No big surprise there, but here *is* a surprise: If it's used for business your web site must be compatible with Internet Explorer all the way back to version SIX! Among enterprise networks, IE6 accounts for SIXTY PERCENT of web browser share (and 78% of IE). And that's as of May, 2009! (http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10231713-2.html) Disgraceful, IMHO, but it's reality. 3 - Don't rely on "if there were something wrong with my web site people would have told me". I can attest from experience that this often isn't true. I've had pages that went for months with major errors that no one told me about. The fact that hardly anyone using "browser xyz" visits your site may be because your site doesn't work with that browser, not because it doesn't need to. Check your pages ruthlessly yourself. Use browsercam (www.browsercam.com) or MultipleIE (http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE) to check browser compatibility. AT THE VERY LEAST validate your code through the World Wide Web Consortium's free validation service (http://validator.w3.org/) - valid code is no guarantee of compatibility, but it is the proper starting point. Of course none of this matters if yours is strictly a hobby site. But if you have any intentions of making money from your web page it's very important. You may only lose one customer over a compatibility issue, but you have no control over who that customer is: A $5.00 one-time buyer or your biggest customer ever. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
