[thelist] Netscape... why?

Erik Mattheis gozz at gozz.com
Fri Jun 7 21:15:00 CDT 2002


At 8:57 PM -0400 6/7/02, aardvark wrote:
>his point is that it's ok to look a little bit different from browser
>to browser... a good design can handle that...
>
>so it wouldn't matter to him (nor to many users) if the form button
>*looks* like a form button in NN4.x, as opposed to some light grey
>text on a grey box with a dark grey border, or whatever convoluted
>non-form control-looking things the kids are designing nowadays....

Well, I've mentioned this very scenario here before but it is still
the best illustration of what I'm talking about:

A client gave me a requirement that the site navigation must be like
an example site, which uses a horizontal frame along the bottom of
the window. I had already promised myself to never unleash another
frameset into the wild and wasn't interested in doing DHTML as I
don't think it's possible to future proof DHTML yet.

The only way I could figure out how to do this was to parse the
userAgent and different stylesheets to NN 6. IE 5 Mac and IE 5+
Windows.

It can't be done with @import unlwss you disregard IE 5 Mac and IE 4
Win,  or disredard IE 5 and 5.5 Win ... if there's something that
will simulate the effect with one stylesheet in all browsers that can
do it, I don't know what it is.

>but cool stuff usually (shouldn't be, for a general site) isn't
>required to use a site, and if it is, then the site probably isn't
>serving its audience well (or isn't serving an audience with any
>NN4.x users)...

As you say later, the client is always right ... and I'm not the type
who is comfortable translating "It's difficult and maybe even not a
good idea" into "It's not possible."

>  > I have two clients that insist
>>  on continuing to use NN 4.x ... both use custom CMSs which are
>>  stunningly beautiful in IE, Opera and NN 6+ ... I cannot get them to
>>  switch. They like NN 4.x. Why? WHY? WWHHYYY? --
>
>- because you offer them no reason to, only reasons why it would be
>better for you...

I'd be happy to make the CMS section look better in NN 4.x if they'd
be happy to pay me! ... but it seems they appreciate that I can just
say <body>, <table>, and <td> and get stuff up quicker.

>- if it ain't broke (which to them, it apparently isn't), don't fix
>it...

Right ... two weeks ago I felt nefarious enough to do a new page in
thew CMS that is difficult to use in NN 4.x ... figured the timing
was right as she's started to look at her site in IE occasionally ...
failed, got a message "please don't bill me for that!"

>hell, i'd still use Word 6.0 if the latest piece of bloatware didn't
>come with this machine... i use none of the new features, and i don't
>care if someone sends me a .doc with some neat-o something or other,
>i usually just wanna read the copy anyway...

I'm still with Office 97 Win and 98 Mac ... I find the attempt to
make an free X-windows Word compatible word processor interesting ...
OpenOffice OS X does not quite cut the mustard yet ... waiting.



--

__________________________________________
- Erik Mattheis

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http://goZz.com/

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