[thelist] Another Way To Determine If You Should Support Old Browsers

Pat Meeks pmeeks at email.msn.com
Tue Dec 11 12:33:10 CST 2001


While I don't pretend to be an expert on this issue, for me, the issue of
supporting old browsers come down to this: Exactly what browsers are my
clients *customers* using?

One way to know "exactly" what browsers *customers* are using is to capture
the http_user_agent info from forms. The results can be a real eye-opener. I
do B2B sites, and the number of major Fortune 500 and international
conglomerates that use NS 4.0 and 4.7 is far larger than most people
think --  and many of these companies also require that all scripting be
turned off  (as well as cookies). And remember, NS4.7 won't display CSS with
scripting disabled!

While logging programs might show that a mere 10% of visitors to a site are
using NS 4+ browsers, that meager little figure could easily represent 50%
or more of you clients gross revenue! I recommend collecting that
information over the course of a few months before you (and your client)
decide what is or is not obsolete. Over the last year I have seen many, many
companies return to simpler, more backward compatible sites -- and I
wouldn't be surprised it it was done because their major clients couldn't
use their sites or simply tired of waiting for the pages to download.

Pat   pmeeks at msn.com







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