[ale] Browser compatibility? (was: Wachovia web banking seems to be fixed with Mozilla)

[Joseph A Knapka]

Fulton Green wrote:
> 
> Here's a burning question: just how far back should we web designers shoot
> for in browser compatibility? The reason I'm asking is that the website I'm
> designing for a client requires some JavaScript for the DHTML and also uses
> CSS pretty heavily. MSIE >= 5.0 and Netscape >= 6.0 seem to like what I've
> done so far, but Netscape 4.7x totally chokes on the DHTML JavaScript and
> almost totally ignores the CSS hints. I'm almost halfway tempted to throw
> an upgrade nastygram to NS 4.7x users, but I'm curious if I should provide
> at least some sort of compatibility for them, especially since Red Hat is
> now only just removing NS 4.7x from their distro (and other distros might
> still install it by default).
> 
> Thoughts? TIA.

I use NS 4.7x, because:

(1) IE is a Micro$haft product, and

(2) NS 6 is even more hideously bloated then 4.7, and is in
    my experience far less stable.

(3) None of the other browsers I've tried (Konqueror,
    Opera, BrowseX) have done much for me - they are either
    less stable or less functional than NS4.

I don't know how many others use NS4.7, but IMO maintaining
compatibility that far back shouldn't be too much to ask.

It seems to me that the easy way to be accessible to
everyone, even Lynx users, is to provide a text-only
version of your site. Sure, it wouldn't be pretty, but
it would give everyone access, and you'd have only
two versions of the site to maintain: the latest-greatest-
screw-you-if-you're-not-running-IE8 version,
and the text version.

Cheers,

-- Joe

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