Professional Web developers don't adapt their sites to NN4 anymore? 9

[Rydel]

That's the impression I had. Probably the most important criteria: what's the actual percentage of NN4 users? Is there statistical data about it? I heard it's below 0,5% now. I need this to persuade my boss that maybe spending time and money on the NN4 version of the site is not worth it. Do you have some data regarding this? And what do you think about it over all? ---

http://www.geocities.com/rydel23/

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[starway]

To be short and to the point: the statement put into the title is not true.
Due to my experience, support of NN4.x is critical to many clients, and it has nothing to do with percentage of usage.
Use of NN4.x decreased during last couple of years but didn't disappeared completely.

Also, it's a question of professional proudness to web-dev company to support their works in NN4.x as well as in all other browsers (Mozilla/N6, IE, Opera).

 

[Rydel]

Thanks for your answer! Although I don't quite agree with you. First of all, there are features that could be easily done in IE5+, but it's absolutely impossible to implement them in NN4.xx! Second, if the browser market share for NN4.xx indeed fell down below 1% then the user base is getting ridiculous. May be, by that rationale ("developers pride&quot you want to create the version of your site in LYNX as well? Oh, God...

P.S. Throwing some hard data into discussion would be quite helpful. Help? Anyone?

P.P.S. Maybe you defend NN4 compatibility so much because the cross-browser tricks os your bread and there is a big risk that with the improved standard compliance the "bread" will be gone? This is just a side note. You don't have to answer. ---

http://www.geocities.com/rydel23/

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[gacaccia]

from what i've seen, ns4 still has a large enough base to justify support. i've seen figures from as low as 4 or 5 percent to as high as 15 percent. figuring a rough average of 10 percent, that's still a significant portion of your viewing audience. too big for most organizations to be willing to ignore.

try doing a web search on web stats. you'll get all sorts of data and can see for yourself where the different browsers fall percentage-wise.

glenn

 

[Wullie]

Rydel,

May be, by that rationale ("developers pride&quot you want to create the version of your site in LYNX as well? Oh, God...

And may I ask what is wrong with that?

A good developer uses the tools provided to do the best job possible, if that requires supporting older browsers then so be it.

Would you also put allowing disabled access to a website in the "Oh, God" catagory?

First of all, there are features that could be easily done in IE5+, but it's absolutely impossible to implement them in NN4.xx!

If you want to provide these features and also support older browsers, then you provide alternative content for those browsers.

Finally, you asked this question. Why do you post a question asking for opinions and then not respect someone for posting theirs? I agree totally with Starway's post.

Hope this helps Wullie

sales@freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.searchit-now.co.uk

 

[RISTMO]

Stats? I lost my good list, but here are some places (W3c had a good list):

http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm

In this site, you can replace the year and month below with anything after January 2001

http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2002/August/browser.php

Rick It's a pleasure to know that I've helped you. If I have,
please click the link below to let me know.

 

[Rydel]

I do respect these opinion, but I happen to disagree. Do you see the difference?

And thanks for taking your time.

Ahh, forgot to tell you, yes, of course, it is going to be alternative content for NN. Completely different pages. E.g. there will be a completely different set of JSP pages for NN4.xxx with a NN prefix or something. ---

http://www.geocities.com/rydel23/

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[iTST]

Hi all

I think there are some points worth stressing here.

First, if you create valid HTML pages, they _should_ work in NN4 ass well as in IE. Or not. There are many things in HTML both browser types do not support (rel-links for instance, they are HTML 2.0!).

Second, creating web pages that work in NN4 as well as in "modern" browsers is not as complicated as it seems.

Third, using proprietary codes is never a solution.

Forth, look at your audience. If they use IE only, then you don't have to worry about NN4. If they use NN4, make the pages look good in NN4 and in IE.

Fith, many government or educational organisations use NN$ as corparate browser, because they use other Netscape Serves als well.

All in all I'd say that NN4 is not dead at all. Why would one want to exclude a future customer?

cu, Sascha cu, Sascha

http://www.itst.org/

 

[NLeaver]

Part of the problem with stats on browsers is usage varies by type of user and geography. Many stats you get are taken from sites that appeal mainly to developers or students, who are more likely to use Netscape and Opera than most of the population. A site that appeals mainly to corporate users is likely to get almost exclusively IE users. The avaerage user uses what comes and would not think of downloading another browser. And what comes is almost always IE. Corporate users are often told they must use a particular version of IE.

I noticed when we ran a commercial website in the UK two years ago that the percentage of IE users was much higher than the stats on the web gave.

A recent stat I saw for commercial sites gave IE5 and above 96%, another (below) gave IE 95%. IE6 seems now to be the most popular browser version, and is probably over 50%

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-938865.html

It would be nice to be able to drop IE5 (not IE5.5) to avoid its inconsistencies, but at > 20% it is too popular

 

[AnakinPt]

In my opinion, i say that when it's possible to support older versions, we should, but when we want to do some funnies, well, neither old versions, neither diferent programs are compatible.

For an example. if you want to do a bordercolor in a table, it works in IE but not in Netscape. If you want to use it, i say to use, if you don't mind that NN users will not see it. I do that cause now, in my website, the % of non IE users is below 1%.

Another thing occurs with the differences between IE 5.0 in Windows and the same version in Mac. There are some differences. In windows somethings apear fine, but when seen in MAC it shows bad, or don't work fine. Well, i say one thing, put the decorative objects in the place they are meant to ... to decor and get a working object to do the work.

Anikin
Hugo Alexandre Dias
Web-Programmer
anikin_jedi@hotmail.com

 

[IBACFII]

I agree with iTST I developed a website for my company and it works in Mozillia, MSIE, and FireFox with out me haveing to do anything at all. I just made sure it was Valid HTML 4.01 and PRESTO! cross browser! No extra work! Everyone can see it right! easy! STAR 4 iTST for the best answer!

IBACFII

 

[RISTMO]

Did Firefox exist when this thread was started? ;-). How about any of the original people commenting in this thread?

IBACFII, welcome to web design. You're very lucky to be designing pages in the present. 2.5 years ago, when this thread was made, things were a lot different. Standards existed, but to a large extent they weren't followed till MSIE 5 and Netscape 5. Although most people used MSIE 5 or 6, there were quite a few people who used Netscape 4.x and MSIE 4.x. I don't know if you've ever tried to use either. Neither of them followed the standards, but what's worse, they both had their own, different standards that they followed. Websites designed according to the standards adopted in MSIE/Netscape 5+ didn't always display correctly in previous versions. In fact, we often had to use incorrect code in case someone was using an old browser. In August of 2002 (when this whole browser-support issue was relevant), there were still 10.5 million people (or page loads? I'm not sure what these statistics are) using Netscape 4.x. Combined with another 9 million using MSIE 4.x, that was just too many people to exclude. So we were often forced to use JavaScript to see which browser was being used and then display different code to different browsers. Thankfully that's not the case today. Only a total of about 180 thousand people use MSIE/Netscape 4.x anymore. Of the browsers that are used, almost all are standards compliant. You're right. If the code's valid, that's pretty much all it takes nowadays. Pages designed with CSS even work now. Before, being able to use css instead of tables was what many considered to set the good designers apart. However, many browsers weren't even able to correctly process the css code to display the page correctly! You rarely see that problem today. Things have certainly come quite a ways. And to be honest, I'm suprised how long it's been. It seems like only a few months ago I was just learning html. But it's been over three years now since I first signed up to be able to post my questions.

Just for reference....

Stats from August 2002:

1. MSIE 5.x 175390515 (49%)
2. MSIE 6.x 147145114 (41%)
3. Netscape 4.x 10549936 (2%)
4. MSIE 4.x 9144984 (2%)
5. Netscape comp. 3597527 (1%)
6. Opera x.x 3413704 (0%)
7. Netscape 6.x 2892219 (0%)
8. Netscape 5.x 1898937 (0%)
9. Unknown 1002930 (0%)
10. Netscape 3.x 193985 (0%)
11. MSIE 2.x 189046 (0%)
12. MSIE 3.x 163214 (0%)
13. Netscape 2.x 20222 (0%)
14. Netscape 1.x 542 (0%)
15. MSIE 1.x 405 (0%)

Stats from December 2004:

1. MSIE 6.x 39945828 (80%)
2. MSIE 5.x 4569062 (9%)
3. Mozilla 1662809 (3%)
4. Netscape 5.x 1101858 (2%)
5. Unknown 893435 (2%)
6. Safari 405196 (1%)
7. Netscape 7.x 389338 (1%)
8. Opera x.x 351607 (1%)
9. Netscape comp. 234836 (0%)
10. MSIE 4.x 97994 (0%)
11. Netscape 4.x 82041 (0%)
12. Netscape 6.x 26892 (0%)
13. Konqueror 24264 (0%)
14. MSIE 3.x 3190 (0%)
15. Netscape 3.x 2263 (0%)
16. Netscape 2.x 190 (0%)
17. Netscape 1.x 26 (0%)

Rick

http://www.ristmo.com/

http://www.arabchurch.com/

http://www.cashfutures.com/

http://www.word-tools.com/

 

[iTST]

Man, who dug up this ages old thread?

Today, I would assume anyone to use a decent browser, and that's not what NN4 is. Left alone special envirnments like intranets, I think we can savely design for a lastest generation browser. That means CSS1 support and support for most of CSS2, as well as standard compliance to HTML 4.x and XHTML 1.x.

Nevertheless, out of various reasons, it is never wrong to test with other browsers, too. Text browsers and exotic stuff like Konqueror or Galeon _are_ used in the wild, even if only by a very small fraction of people.

Regards, Sascha

cu, Sascha

http://www.itst.org/

 

[Rydel]

I started this thread and asked this question on Aug 7, 2002. This is like centuries ago, within the time scale of the internet age. And the nature of the question only proves it.

So, any crazy designers out there that still check how the site looks in NN4?



regards,
rydel n23

http://pravapis.org/

http://rydel.net/

 

[taylorantone]

I think it all depends on the coding hacks you'd have to put it place and how time-consuming or how large of an undertaking it is. If you're page displays perfectly for the 94% of the people with decently current browsers, then weigh that 6% against the amount of work you have to go through for them.

 

[cLFlaVA]

Here's the link I always refer to: browser statistics

*cLFlaVA
----------------------------
[tt]Sigs cause cancer.[/tt]

 

[cLFlaVA]

... and I'm very proud to say that FireFox takes up almost 20% of the market. So, in conclusion, 1 person out of every 5 people is a nerd.

*cLFlaVA
----------------------------
[tt]Sigs cause cancer.[/tt]

 

[iTST]

cLFlaVA: That's the statistics of w3schools.com. I can show you statistics of other sites where Firefox has a 0% share Stick to what w3s says on this verry page:

You cannot - as a web developer - rely only on statistics. Statistics can often be misleading.

Regards, Sascha

cu, Sascha
My Blog:

http://www.itst.org/web/

 

[cLFlaVA]

I never rely on statistics. The first post in this thread asked for statistics though.



*cLFlaVA
----------------------------
[tt]Sigs cause cancer.[/tt]

 

[philote]

If you have the ability you could always set up your web server to log the user agent and gather your own stats. This will be much more accurate than any other statistics you can find because it will be specific to your site.