Old Browsers and security - Was Re: [thelist] Site review please

[Chris Hayes]

AFAIK it's not just hat ppl  _should_  be using updated browsers, they
really _must_, with the significant advances in security, encryption and
cert handling wouldn't it be a public service to detect their browsers and
tell 'em where to get updated?  Just plain refuse to display them the site?

*ducks*

:)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Scott Brady" <evolt at scottbrady.net>
To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>; <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 5:11 PM
Subject: Re: [thelist] Site review please


> Original Message:
> > From: Thibaut Allender <mailing at capsule.org>
> > it's a vicious circle... we can talk about this for ages
> > my philosophy is : educate people, adapt site so that it's accessible,
> > but don't correct every old browser bug... let them die slowly, don't
> > encourage the use of dinosaurs...
>
> I agree.  However, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't ignore any browser
that's older than a year. It doesn't hurt to test in Netscape 6 or 7,
especially if your site's stats show them to be a decent percentage of your
audience.
>
> In my most recent client's site, "Netscape" browsers made up 6.7% of all
visits (I'm assuming that "Mozilla" is included in the "Other" category,
which is only 4.4%) in January.  Almost 50% of the Netscape visits (about
3.3% of all visits) were Netscape 6 (it says Netscape 5, so I'm assuming
that means 6 -- stupid versioning system of Netscape), 31% of Netscape were
Netscape 7.  Together those account for more than all of Mozilla.
>
> Older versions of Netscape are far less significant in our statistics, so
we don't even bother testing in NS4.
>
> > btw, visiting your site with netscape 4 is funny, there's a strange
> > redirection making browser loop on the first page (nice to put some
> > servers down ;)
>
> For my own site, thanks for pointing out the problem.  I had initially
tested the "low version" of the page in the past and it worked fine. I seem
to have made a change in the stylesheet without testing NS4 that caused that
loop.  Strange.  It's fixed now.
>
> ----------------------------
> Scott Brady
> http://www.scottbrady.net/
>
>
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