[thelist] Netscape... why?

aardvark roselli at earthlink.net
Sat Jun 8 01:25:00 CDT 2002


> From: Erik Mattheis <gozz at gozz.com>
[...]
> 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.

eww... i'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assumed you
counseled the client on caveats...

> 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.

see, i'm thinking that, as painful as it may seem, the frameset might
be a better way to guarantee similar look and capability... granted,
there are trade-offs (see my frames article), but then you weigh them
against the caveats with the CSS approach (which includes dev time,
in some cases)...

> 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.

again, if you want to hit all browsers, this might not have been my
approach...  but i'm also not privy to all the details...

> >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."

no, i understand that... sometimes i've had to tell a client "no,"
and not always because i *want* to, but because it's a bad idea...
there've been a few projects that i very much wanted to work on
*because* of the cool stuff i could do, but given the client's
audience requirements, i had to reel it in...

and that meshes with my above statement -- the site may not be
serving its audience... and if that happens, get it in writing, and
do it anyway...

> >  > 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.

then you know their priority -- certainly not how it looks...

> >- 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!"

yeah, i hate that... try to bait them down the right path, but they
still insist that all the copy on the page must be red, bold, all-
caps, italic, underlined, and blinking... oh, and with a drop
shadow... not that that's happened (ok, it has)...

> >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.

played with it on win... still bloated because it tries too hard to
match features... that's why i use WordPad...

--
Read the evolt.org case study
Usability: The Site Speaks for Itself
http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904151035/evoltorg
ISBN: 1904151035





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