Suzanne — Wed, 22 May 2002 16:46:49 +0000

Netscape 4.x is now what, seven years old with some newer addons but no underlying upgrade to the engine? Which puts it, frankly, at the pretty damn good for its age level for me. That said, Netscape doesn't support CSS at all, rather, it interprets CSS through its JSS engine. Which is something to keep in mind as well. And it does support a lot of CSS, again, considering its age.

Additionally, it is still the only option for some major institutions where "downloading a new browser" is not an option because the browsers there are heavily customized and installed on a network basis and there are issues involved in that far beyond the "free" status of the browser. Hopefully, this is just a matter of time, especially with N6.2 being more stable and attractive. I won't address the other nations with less access to the Internet and to the web, but suffice it to say that some nations still have party lines.

Anyway, yes, good discussion. I'll only add that content and code must not always go hand in hand. The push for CSS/XHTML, XML, et cetera is to allow for specific markup of the text content that is then "styled" externally, making it rather moot whether you prefer bells and whistles or not. With the code separate from the content, you can serve the same dish with all the trimmings or on its own, no pain to the user, no pain to the developer.

Abhishek Reddy — Wed, 22 May 2002 13:28:15 +0000

They don't have to show exactly the same in all browsers. They could at least be backward compatible enough to show the content that really matters, with loss of some formatting, interactivity, layout and what not.

At least then you're not closing the doors on your visitors. You'd be accommodating them for all that their browser is worth.

zollet — Wed, 22 May 2002 13:20:11 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by Abhishek Reddy
Cool effects don't make a website; content does.

Another way of looking at NS is that it - and other browsers like Opera - force designers to code properly. IE tolerates the warts-and-all approach to code, which I think, is the worst way of doing anything, not just code.

Noone said cool effects make a website, but depending on the site, they sure can be a huge part of it! I have been developing cross-browser websites for many companies for many years. The problem is that I'm simply tired of making a website, viewing it in IE and Opera and they look 99.95% similair, then you load it in NS and the forms are too wide, or half of the background is not showing, or NS can't follow your CSS, the list goes on and on. So if there's anyone you want to point finger at saying they don't code properly, it should be the programmers behind NS.

Also it completely depends on the website. For example, we have a music website and we are using many features that don't work properly in NS and we really want to use those things, that's why we chose to show NS users a "bad browser" message. However, our company website has been made to support all browsers since every visitor could be a potential customer.

Abhishek Reddy — Wed, 22 May 2002 10:02:35 +0000

That is a good point.

Mike Feury — Wed, 22 May 2002 09:59:05 +0000

I'm not arguing against anything you say - all very valid and desireable

Rather, I'm arguing for something else in addition - not to penalize the poor coders any more than necessary.

For example, say I want to find out about fishing in southern Equador. I want to read the stuff from the guy who's spent his life fishing around the region, and is the acknowledged local authority. It's unlikely he's also going to be one of the better coders in the region.

I want there to be as few obstacles as possible in his way if he decides to share his life's knowledge and wisdom with the world - a generous act from which many thousands would benefit.

Think of how much knowledge and wisdom goes to waste today because publishing a book is such a hassle. The web has the potential to avoid much of such waste in the future, and I want to see that potential realised.

Great if the spelling is good, and it works in all browsers etc - but the key thing is that I'll know there are venomous water snakes in that lake over there

Abhishek Reddy — Wed, 22 May 2002 09:10:15 +0000

Agreed.

I am merely saying that IE, in particular, is getting very loose with code. It's beginning to slip away from those standards it should be sticking to.

NS & Opera and such aren't too strict, but they aren't very forgiving either.

But which is the lesser evil?

To use your analogy, I am not saying shut out all posts with errors, but rather post with fewer errors -- just so it's easier to read and understand, does not become incomprehensible to others who don't speak the language well, and also to understand the language so as to be able to help others with it.

Humans are smarter than software. Few (non-programming ) people break down every time they see a semicolon or comma is missing. One typo shouldn't cause many problems for us, but missing that one closing tag for a div, which ends up hiding everything on screen in non-IE browsers, can be costly.

Quote: Originally posted by Mike Feury
Good code doesn't make a website; content does

Code is a tool to broadcast good content. Why shut out people from the information in favor of cool effects and poor skill?

Mike Feury — Wed, 22 May 2002 08:47:43 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by Abhishek Reddy
Cool effects don't make a website; content does.

Very true. To which should be added:
Good code doesn't make a website; content does

The day when browsers move towards less tolerance of sloppy code is the day when a significant section of would-be web authors get shut out from this wonderful medium.

Imagine if your posts wouldn't go thru here unless your spelling, punctuation and grammar were all just so

Browsers need to support standards - but that does not mean they must become less flexible with code handling - at least, I sincerely hope not.

The Webmistress — Wed, 22 May 2002 08:04:44 +0000

NS is here to stay and with Microsoft being the company it is then you will always have people who wont use IE out of principle. You really aren't on to a winner with the attitude you have towards NS. IE isn't the bee all and end all you are making it out to be!

Abhishek Reddy — Wed, 22 May 2002 07:40:53 +0000

Cool effects don't make a website; content does.

Another way of looking at NS is that it - and other browsers like Opera - force designers to code properly. IE tolerates the warts-and-all approach to code, which I think, is the worst way of doing anything, not just code.

Messy code has a lot of problems:

Makes it hard for future editors to work with it
It makes some designers often shun crucial sectors of the market just because they don't use the "right" software
It leads to errors and slows productivity
There is less understanding of the code's mechanisms which ultimately means less intelligent use of it, and little problem-solving ability.

zollet — Wed, 22 May 2002 07:27:44 +0000

Personally, I think NS is the poorest excuse for a web browser and people should stop using it. We have banned NS on one of our websites that receives about 2,000 unique visitors per day. The visitors tht come there with NS, they get referred to a page with a message with information.

I don't think many other designers are too happy about wasting extra time to suffering to remove most of the cool effects from their website just because NS can't handle to show them correctly. A couple of years ago you had no choice since a huge percent of your daily visitors were using NS, but today it's less than 10% and most of the users that have NS installed, have another and better browser installed.