[thelist] Need a browser "crash" test

Max Kanat-Alexander maxka at cats.ucsc.edu
Tue Oct 29 19:34:01 CST 2002


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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
At 05:06 PM 10/29/2002, you wrote:
>>Yes, I am aware of exactly which piece of code causes
>>the crash, but removing it makes the sub-navigation to
>>the left look like complete crap in the Netscape 4's
>>that don't crash.

         Well, I think you have a few options:

         1) Figure out how many _important_ visitors will be using NS <
4.5. If you think there's even a few, you should probably eliminate the
code for NN4. (Using @import or any various other tricks.) Basically, NN4
users should expect pages to look like trash, but you still want users to
be able to see the page without endless frustration.

         When I write pages, I'm usually happy that they load at all in
NN4, and then I'm _really_ happy if they actually look pretty good.
However, I would be pretty horrified (as you also seem to be) if they
actually crashed my browser. Being able to see the page _at all_ is what I
would expect as an NN4 user. It does horrify me to think that my pages look
bad to some people, but I think I can trade that off for them being able to
_see_ the page.

         Eventually, if a lot of pages don't look so hot in NN4, people
will start to go, "Hey, maybe I should get another browser..." (especially
if you help them in this area by providing "upgrade your browser" links).

         2) userAgent sniff to remove the offending code. This is basically
not a perfect solution, because it often breaks browsers that aren't
detected by the sniffer, and other various problems. I myself have coded a
sniffer in ColdFusion; it's actually pretty decent and clever, but even
self-made solutions for this sort of thing can't be perfect. (Nature of the
beast.) However, using a sniffer will "fix" your problem for most purposes.

         -M




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