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/

---

 

[taylorantone]

Even doing that, though, you run into the problem of those random hackers who really aren't customers messing up your stats.

If you're using NN4, you shouldn't be. If you're still on IE5x, well, you shouldn't be but your shortcomings are easily accommodated.

At some point you just have to say NO to supporting old browsers, and provide a link to download something better.

 

[RISTMO]

... 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."

You can thank all the IE security flaws people were talking about a couple months ago for that . A ton of newsletters circulated among non-profficient computer users scaring them into using Firefox. I'd been telling my mom for months about it, and I'd even installed it as her default browser and deleted most of the shortcuts to IE, but she still stuck to IE. Then she saw the newsletter and begged me to help her get this "new browser that's supposed to help my computer not get viruses"....the same one I'd been talking about all the while ;-).

Lol. It's about time people started switching to it. Most people I meet have heard about it now. And their only comments are positive, even if they haven't used it yet. So hopefully its usage will continue to grow.

I actually considered installing a copy of Netscape 4 a few weeks ago, just to see what my pages would look like. Could be fun.

Rick

http://www.ristmo.com/

 

[Rydel]

The bigger their share, the sooner there will be security issues. It's only a matter of time when malicious hackers will start targeting Firefox and finding flaws and exploits in it.





regards,
rydel n23

http://pravapis.org/

http://rydel.net/

 

[RISTMO]

True there'd be more victims and more reason to develop hacks, however, hackers tend to fit into the geek category, and it's the geeks who've known about Firefox for quite a while--certainly long enough to develop hacks if they wanted to.

Rick

http://www.ristmo.com/

 

[taylorantone]

That's also true, but hackers hack for results as much as fun. Why take the time to hack 20% when you can hack the majority share of 75%?

 

[RISTMO]

Cause there are already so many known IE vunerabilities. And there are countless hundreds or thousands of hackers working on finding more IE exploits. And 20% is a decent minority to be worth the results -- especially if people are counting on the fact that so far it's been immune to hack attempts.

Rick

http://www.ristmo.com/

 

[taylorantone]

There's also the Microsoft name. That alone makes them a target.

Let's take a recent example: the new Microsoft AntiSpyware app. AdAware releases and geeks jump for joy. We find out it works very well. Now, today, MS releases it's AntiSpyware beta1 and everyone's badmouthing their programming, their intentions, and the company in general. I've used it already.

 

[RISTMO]

Yeah, Microsoft releases a program that can fix the security problems their system has, and instead of being glad they can finally have those problems fixed, people just complain that they existed in the first place ;-).

Rick

http://www.ristmo.com/

 

[philote]

Even doing that, though, you run into the problem of those random hackers who really aren't customers messing up your stats.

Perhaps you'll have the random hacker that's sending the wrong user agent or running NN4 just for fun, but I doubt it going to be that common. If you see NN4 users in your logs then you'll have to decide, based on who you think your visitors are and how many are using NN4, whether its something you think you should support. Based on other web sites stats I doubt you'll see many NN4 visitors and you may decide you can afford to serve these users a broken or unusable site.

 

[RISTMO]

At this point, if someone's using NN 4, they're either too stubborn, too incompetant, or unable to upgrade their browser. Either way, I don't really pity them. If they haven't upgraded by now, they don't need to be at my sites . Seriously, that's like providing support for MSIE 1.0 2 years ago -- who was doing that? Back then, it was providing support for NN & IE 4 & Opera. Now it's providing support for Netscape 6+ and IE 5. We still do it, but in a while, we won't really need to. we certainly shouldn't have to support NN and IE 4.x. Even if a small handful of people still use them, they're so few that it's a losing battle for them, and they'll start upgrading when they're unable to browse for what they want because no one supports them anymore. Might sound a little harsh, but seriously, we're trying to make the web BETTER, not worse. It's certainly time to not worry about those completely out-of-date browsers.

At least that's my opinion .

Rick

http://www.ristmo.com/

 

[taylorantone]

100% agree with ristmo.

 

[trollacious]

People who use NN4 must run into a LOT of websites that don't work properly for them. This is a fact of life for those users. You can't find leaded gasoline in the U.S. any more because there is such a small demand for it, too. If you own an older vehicle that needs this kind of additive, you know the problems and you're responsible for taking appropriate action on your own to handle them.

Along the same lines, those who have Javascript turned off in their browsers are a minority, and probably have done that deliberately. They have problems with MANY websites that rely on JS for cookies, special effects, navigation, and other routine tasks. They know the cost for turning the scripting off, and choose to pay the price.

I can see designing a site to work with the latest 2 versions of any major browser, or making it compliant with the HTML version from a couple years in the past. Beyond that, there are diminishing returns for catering to anachronistic users, even when there's the intellectual reward and challenge of making it compliant with all the oldies and moldies.

Another browser that I believe is more prevalent than NN4 that few people write for is WebTV. I haven't seen numbers on that yet, but most comments I've seen from web designers that WEREN'T WebTV fans have been to the effect that WebTV is for people who aren't serious about the Internet.

Just my half cent worth.

Lee

 

[LTeeple]

Hi all, an interesting discussion. Here are my thoughts:

First of all, a good developer considers his or her audience. This is the most important factor in development! For example, my target audience tends to be businesses, where some machines are old! That means Windoze '95, Netscape 4.x, etc. It also means that some of my audience uses cutting-edge technology. Thus, it was a challenge to develop a current website that will appear nearly identical using various platform/browser combinations.

Having said that, my comment to those who say production 100% valid HTML code will result in cross-browser compatibility I say bah! I validate all my web pages using W3C's HTML Validation tool (and a wonderful tool it is!).
After running my pages through the tool and verifying that there are absolutely no errors, I've viewed the same pages in Netscape Navigator 4.08 only to find the page looks significantly different - to the point where my design was broken.

There are certainly many tricks of the trade out there. My favorite is using a separate style sheet for NN4. This has been the single-most important strategy for achieving a great-looking site, no matter what the browser.

To sum up, and answer the thread title: "Professional Web developers don't adapt their sites to NN4 anymore?", I would have to say that is an incorrect statement. A better statement would be: "Professional web developers adapt their sites to their users' needs."


Cheers!
Laura

 

[taylorantone]

I just have a really hard time understanding the refusal to upgrade mentality. Sometimes you have to upgrade to keep up with the times, and you can't expect others to remain back with you because you won't/can't upgrade.

What valid reason would a company have for NOT moving beyond NN4 or some other "ancient" (by current standards) browser? If it's a cost issue, what do you really gain by trying to do business with them if they can't even afford the basic upgrades? Unless, of course, you're selling IT upgrade services.

 

[RhythmAddict112]

Article with some nice links on this topic.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/netscape/

 

[RISTMO]

LTeeple, if you really have that many clients you could use a basic JavaScript to say something like:

You are one of the .05% still using NN 4. We'd like to offer you a free upgrade....etc.

I understand developing for your target group. And if you said that many people in your target group used Lynx or some text-based browser, I'd say absolutely develop for them (at least make an additional site they can be redirected to). But that's entirely different from developing for NN 4. See text-based browsers aren't fading out. They haven't been replaced with newer, better versions. They aren't completely out of date. But if you keep designing for completely out of date software, how are you helping your users? You're giving them one more reason to not upgrade, when their experience would be much better if they did. If you're offering windows 95 products and all your clients are on 95 machines with old browsers, it might be one thing. But if your service is for those with advanced technology, develop according to the standards and include a simple Javascript to tell those on NN 4.x that they're one of only 80k people in the entire world (give them the low statistic ;-)) that has a browser that can't read html correctly.

I still think that unless you're selling stuff directly related to their old software that you should not support them.

Rick

http://www.ristmo.com/

 

[ChrisHunt]

Now there's a blast from the past.

I wouldn't put in any "click here to upgrade" messages - anybody still using NN4 must have a reason for doing so. It's probably a really stupid reason, but they're unlikely to be swayed by some random website they visit.

I don't "adapt my site for NN4" any more (not that I ever really did). I don't adapt it for any browser. Just keep your markup clean and valid, and any browser should be able to cope with it. That's not to say that pages won't look significantly different in old browsers, significantly worse in some of them, but they're still usable - text can be read, pictures can be seen, navigation will navigate. It may look butt-ugly, but NN4 users will be used to that!

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd