The two reasons most users stay with old browsers are:
1. It shipped with the OS and they were too lazy to update (and
ignored the Windows update plea to do so)
- or -
2. They work in a company environment that requires a specific version
My opinion is that (1) went away after Windows XP significantly
replaced Windows 9x/ME and Windows 2000. Really, how many people are
running Windows 95? Go ahead, raise your hands. My guess is that for
security reasons if nothing else, scenario (2) doesn't exist. IE has
had security problems that have been patched. It's not perfect but
compared to IE 5, it's much better. I still don't use it :)
Given the facts that Netscape 4 was seldom preinstalled on systems
and that anyone smart enough to get it back then is probably smart
enough to get Firefox now, it's unlikely that computers are running
NS4 by accident, laziness or stupidity.
IE 6, Safari and Firefox are all very real and have the predominant
chunk of the market. My policy has been to support Safari, Firefox
and IE 6+. There are edge cases were someone just has to run an
arcane or archaic browser, but how much of your underlying code do
you need to have wrapped up in supporting these cases? A simple: alert
('Sorry, your browser hasn't been supported since the pre-Cambrian
era. Time to update.'); would do.
Note that companies who really do bet a lot on capturing casual
arrivals are willing to bet on platforms. Zillow.com, up until
recently, focused their development effort on making things work in
IE and Firefox. Safari was only recently added. They calculated that
any Mac user would be pissed off but not so much so that they would
have a problem downloading Firefox. Google documents have typically
lagged in supporting Safari. Again, these are big bets and tough
prioritizations but smart people are coming to the conclusion that it
is not a prudent use of their development resources to support every
browser all at once.
Just some thoughts...
On Nov 30, 2007, at 3:37 PM, Ken Snyder wrote:
>
> kangax wrote:
>> I'm afraid bringing in xhtml would get us into more trouble
>> http://www.autisticcuckoo.net/archive.php?id=2005/03/14/xhtml-is-dead
>> : )
>>
>> The issue is obviously debatable.
> Very interesting indeed. What do list members think about XHTML versus
> HTML? It is interesting especially since the prototype and
> scriptaculous
> authors consistently use XHTML. IMO the root of the debate is what to
> do about IE being so far behind the curve.
>
>
> I think some of Ian's ideas are made on bad assumptions
> (http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml).
>
> 1) He assumes support of legacy browsers is important. In the 2 1/2
> years since this article, almost all web authors have stopped
> targeting
> IE5 and Netscape 4. A lot of the problems with XHTML go away when
> legacy support is dropped.
>
> 2) He assumes that web authors cannot push browser technology.
> Here are
> a few examples of how authors can push technology:
> - If every page stopped working (e.g. showed an xml tree) in IE one
> day,
> Microsoft would have no choice but to release patches.
> - If every author made a feature rich page for non-IE browsers and a
> boring text-page for IE browsers, Microsoft would be highly
> pressured to
> come up to speed with Gecko, Opera, and WebKit.
> - From Microsoft's perspective, it is important that their product
> work
> well in normal operating conditions. If 90% of web pages are XHTML by
> IE8's release, maybe Microsoft would consider better support for both
> "fake" and "true" XTHML. In such a case, web authors could quickly
> convert their fake XHTML into true HTML with a few adjustments
> (e.g. add
> an XML header).
>
> 3) He ignores the importance of new browser technology such as
> mobile-device browsers. If all web pages were XHTML, CPU-savvy mobile
> devices would save a lot of cycles by assuming the document was
> well-formed.
>
> 4) He seems to be advocating making web pages that will last forever.
> In the evolving and fast-moving web world, there are a lot of exciting
> things coming along: SVG images, columnar layout, full PNG support,
> multiple background images, and super useful JavaScript such as
> getElementsByClassName and getElementsBySelector. I feel like the
> best
> way to pressure Microsoft is to start giving non-IE users a better
> experience by using these newly emerging technologies. Sure, SVG
> might
> fizzle out, but such risks are often worth taking.
>
> Basically, I think that Ian's perspective is to sit and wait for
> Microsoft while I would rather fight and push!
>
> - Ken Snyder
>
>
> >
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