[thelist] NS 4.7 compatibility?

Lee McIvor lee at thinkco.com
Fri Jul 28 10:51:15 CDT 2006


Given that Netscape are now up to release 8 of their browser, and
Netscape browsers as a whole are estimated at less than .5% of overall
browser usage, I'd say they are themselves pretty good arguments for not
supporting it.

Besides, using web standards you can provide some kind of fallback
position, just without the more advanced functionality that other users
will get.

Seems ridiculous to me to design a site using outdated, non-standard
methods to support (very) old browsers, whilst missing out on the
benefits of browsers that 99% of us use, although I know this isn't your
decision of course, and i've been in the same boat - believe me!

I'd also imagine that Netscape have long since stopped supporting NS4,
which is another useful argument. Similarly I believe that MS stopped
supporting IE5 earlier this year (or maybe last).

Anyway, best of luck, and I'll be interested if anyone else can come up
with some interesting approaches too.

Lee McIvor
Web Developer

Email     lee.mcivor at thinkco.com
Telephone +44 (0)191 269 9840
Facsimile +44 (0)191 269 9841
Website   www.thinkco.com

TH_NK, 42 Leazes Park Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4PL, UK

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-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of FayeC
Sent: 28 July 2006 16:32
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: [thelist] NS 4.7 compatibility?

I have been doing some research on the necessitity of backwards
compatibility for corporate sites.
Currently our site is compatible with NS 4.7 and above. It is a
corporate banking site geared towards major companies as clients and
it's currently some 3 years old. The issue is that because of that
restriction (imposed by marketing) we are unable to design anything
using CSS layout and are stuck with nested tables *everywhere* to make
things look ok in NS as they do in IE. That also limits our use of the
space since we are not allowed to use drop down menus which means
content and navigation crowd the site and the pages are *too long*.
>From all the corporate banks in the top 10 list (N. America, Europe,
Asia) only 3 - that's counting us - are NS 4.7 compatible.
Here's my question:
Is it a valid point to maintain the site compatible with NS 4.7? 
And if not what would be a VERY valid argument I could use to propose
the change to a more current version?
We would need major re-engineering of the site to make everything fit
nice and look nice but with less constraints we can play with layout
much easier.
Any comments and ideas are welcome,

FayeC




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