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

Sarah Sweeney mr.sanders at designshift.com
Thu Jun 17 08:45:53 CDT 2004


Joel Konkle-Parker wrote:
> 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.

My brother develops a site for the graduate department in a university 
and complains about the computers (and the users) in the labs, which 
apparently were set up under a deal with a major vendor; part of the 
deal was that NN4 was installed as the default browser. Now, even though 
most if not all of these computers also have IE (6, I think), people use 
NN4 cause it's the default. He also mentioned that a lot of students 
visiting the graduate department site come from some foreign countries 
where their computers don't tend to be as high-end as here, so NN4 is 
more prevalent. These are a couple of examples of the kind of users who 
still use NN4. I would imagine that lots of schools, businesses, 
libraries, etc, have had NN4 installed by default, and will be upgraded 
eventually - just don't hold your breath!

In my particular case, I think a lot of the visitors of the site I'm 
working on are also working in an office where NN4 was installed by 
default, and users don't have admin privileges, so they can't upgrade. 
Still, I've printed a small message at the bottom of the screen 
suggesting that users upgrade, and I've included links to a few recent 
browsers. It would be great if I could think up a one-line explanation 
of *why* they should upgrade - something that would not offend, and 
would be easy for anyone to understand. However, I doubt this is possible :)

-- 
Sarah Sweeney
Web Developer & Programmer
Portfolio :: http://sarah.designshift.com
Blog, etc :: http://hardedge.ca


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