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

Sarah Sweeney mr.sanders at designshift.com
Wed Jun 16 12:34:49 CDT 2004


Ed McCarroll wrote:
> Unless my client was in a position to control which browser is used by
> every user, I would be more concerned with how many NS4.x users there
> actually are, and less concerned with whether or not they have a good
> reason to do so.

Sorry, I probably should have been more precise. The site is already 
developed, and there is already separate tables version for Netscape 
4.x, which looks almost the same. However, I'd still like to convince 
them to give that up sometime in the near future, and be able to use 
this argument for other clients, if I feel it is prudent.

In my opinion (please don't flame me for saying so), creating a separate 
version of the site that looks (close to) the same just for the 4% of 
visitors (or whatever the number might be) still using NN4 is coddling 
those users, some of whom (I'm not saying all) I think are still using 
it because they just don't want to bother to upgrade, not because their 
computer can't handle it.

I really do just want the information just to *present* to them, not to 
force them to do what I want. This client pays a certain amount of money 
per month for site maintenance and upgrades, so there is a limited 
amount of work I can do for them in the time allowed, although there is 
a lot of work that they would like to have done (eventually). Dropping 
NN4 support would leave more time to add other features to the site 
which would be useful to more than just 4% of visitors.

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


More information about the thelist mailing list