[thelist] system requirements for Netscape 4.x vs recent browsers

[Diane Soini]

Well, then, seems that most NS4 users are at universities or are Unix 
geeks and engineers. If 4% of the client's users are in this 
demographic, does he believe he will lose a lot of money if this 
demographic sees a less fancy version of his site because it was 
designed to web standards?

The Unix geeks may very well prefer the plain version of a web site. 
And Unix geeks/engineers are probably very capable of installing 
Mozilla if they want to. So they have made a conscious choice to use 
NS4 and probably understand the consequences (or would understand if 
they were explained to them).

That leaves the university folks. Some of them probably have to write 
home to their parents for money. Staff members ought not to be using 
company time for anything other than business their jobs. Faculty, 
well, that's probably the only hole that won't get filled. But now 
we're talking about a fraction of his 4%. If that fraction isn't in his 
target market, then perhaps you've overcome all the reasons why not to 
design to web standards.

Diane

On Thursday, June 17, 2004, at 08:33 AM, 
thelist-request at lists.evolt.org wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2004-06-17 at 03:07, Diane Soini wrote:
> I'm curious: You mentioned 4% of the client's users use Netscape 4. Any
> idea who they are?
>
> Others mentioned sites with statistics on browser usage, but they are
> just numbers. Overall, who are the people who use NS4? Do they come
> from a particular region? Socioeconomic group? Age? Country? ?
>
> Well, I had to browse using NS4 yesterday. My main machine was down, 
> so I was using the old SGI in the office. I'd say definitely engineers 
> using UNIX are prime offenders.
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