Why is it that Netscape is always the difficult browser? Everytime I program a site, IE and Mozilla look like gold but somehow Netscape always likes to read the code like it doesn't speak HTML. I don't get this.

Needless to say, if there are any Netscape compatibility experts out there that want to lend a helping hand to a fellow hoster, please give me a shout.

Thanks in advance!

A couple of ideas....

Netscape has fallen to 1% "market" share It can probably be safely ignored.

If you don't want to do that, program to Netscape FIRST, then get it to look right in the other browsers.

Thanks for the comment, I knew Netscape was low, I didn't realize they were that low. Perhaps I will just ignore them. Thanks. I figure I should be okay if IE and Mozilla work...any other large ones you figure I should consider?

Originally posted by VanHost
Thanks for the comment, I knew Netscape was low, I didn't realize they were that low. Perhaps I will just ignore them. Thanks. I figure I should be okay if IE and Mozilla work...any other large ones you figure I should consider?

In my opinion you should be fine programming for IE and Mozilla. Mozilla has taken up the slack for Netscape. Last I checked, late last autumn when I was employed with a largish national retail chain and they were revamping their eCommerce, Mozilla was at 4%.

You may want to get some other feedback first, though. The only other "major" browser to consider would be Opera. To be really safe, Netscape, IE, Mozilla and Opera should keep you covered REALLY well.

That's what I figured, thanks again for the input!

As always, it depends on your Client marker. If you have a Client and say, they are a company using 100's or 1,000's of PCs with Netscape 4.x, then I really would make sure the pages work for them. Otherwise, I would also agree to not worry about Netscape version pre v6.x -- and not too much about those, either. ;)

As for other "major" Browsers, why do people always seem to forget about the Mac OS? All Browser versions do seem to interept some CSS a bit different than the Standards would prefer.

We could also go into discussion about the Browsers provided in a Linux OS. They don't have the same Fonts as a PC and some pages, regardless of other coding aspects, look really bad.

I am not forgetting the Mac OS, I simply can't test it as easy as I can PC as I do not own a Mac!

That sort of came out wrong. I wasn't browbeating you, VanHost, for not mentioning the Mac, only that a lot of people (PC users mostly) don't seem to worry about it. Usually for the very reason, they don't have a Mac. Which is why those of us who code HTML for a living will either buy one or get friendly with someone who does have one. :)

I am "friendly" with a number of Mac users - many of them who are not currently online...but I wasn't taking your comment offensively...just as constructive criticism.

Thanks.

What's the url, I can take a look at it later on a mac using safari and ie.

IE, Opera, Netscape and Mozilla 5.5+ is what you need to code for if you want it to work on all browsers, or the much bigger part of them...

Of course its damn near impossible to create a good looking website that will work and look good on all OS and browsers...

It’s also a waste of time to try, think of it this way:

1) REGULAR people have regular PC's with a version of windows..
2) People who have windows have IE installed already, and it’s free for them...

The above are 90-95% of the surfers...
Not everybody is technically inclined as the users here, people who have Linux are mostly programmers etc'... people who have Opera are mostly handicapped; it’s actually designed for them... Netscape is dying...

If I were you I would code for IE and Opera, if it works on both then most people will view your page ok... keep in mind that different java is needed for both of them, so If for an example you want to play streaming radio on your site like me you have to provide extra code for Opera (and Netscape)...

You probably know all this but I'm just giving my views on this.. ;)

Originally posted by Rich2k
What's the url, I can take a look at it later on a mac using safari and ie.


Thanks for the offer, however, as the site is not up yet I can't do this. Also, I have friends locally with MACs who I can sit on the phone with and discuss what is wrong with my sites when I am testing them.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to post.:cool:

It all depends on your audience.

If its for consumers and the public, you can pretty much just rely on IE compatibility.

If its aimed (or at least a significant percentage of your visitors) are designers or press you need to account for macs

If it's aimed at technical people then make sure it works in Mozilla, Opera, etc.

Originally posted by Rich2k
It all depends on your audience.

If its for consumers and the public, you can pretty much just rely on IE compatibility.

If its aimed (or at least a significant percentage of your visitors) are designers or press you need to account for macs

If it's aimed at technical people then make sure it works in Mozilla, Opera, etc. And there is where the problem is, for people who pay to have a Web site coded for them. Any business in their right mind doesn't give two whits, what Browser their Visitors are using. Maybe to the point of, as long as 99.99% of them can view the pages correctly, the rest don't really matter.

People who code for personal sites can do whatever they want, that is a given. Business sites are different matter and, in fact, it's nice to see the US start the ball rollowing on forcing sites to meet a certain level of Accessability Standards. Eventually that will trickle down and more people/Web sites will use them.

It's not really that hard to code for the majority of Browsers (ver 5.x and up) and even Accessibility coding is easy -- once you get used to it.

BTW, this is no reflection on anyone in particular. The comment made "forced me ;)" to reply, as it is such a mis-conception -- designing for IE.

Quite, accessibility is not too hard (certainly not to WAI level A compliance).

Also make sure you stick to the W3C XHTML and CSS standards and you won't go far wrong.

It's very common for people to say 'accessibility means no layout tables'. Quite the contrary. Layout tables are allowed in accessibility compliance so long as they downgrade gracefully if they were removed. That basically means take care with your tables and don't go overboard with colspans and rowspans.

Although don't you just think sometimes that forcing people to code in a certain way in the name of accessibility might just be an excuse for the lack of better programming in the accessibility software itself? Just a thought.

But again it all comes down to audience. To be perfectly honest if 99.99% of all visitors were IE then most business WOULD forget about 0.01% as it's not going to harm their business in the big scheme of things. Granted it's not ideal, but that's life.

Afterall, without innovation (which REQUIRES changes to the current standards) we wouldn't have got anywhere. And thus you can't expect all browsers to immediately be compliant. FOr once Microsoft led the way on this, netscape then had to play catchup.

Some good comments there, Rich, but you're way off base on the last one. Netscape provided us with so much of what we have now (JS, Tables, Forms, etc.) for coding. And IE has never lead the way in anything for Browsers -- except for their own "Browser specific code" which nobody (Browser Creator's & Users alike) really cares about.

Sure, IE had some "nifty" coding, but like the "blink" tag, soon fell out of fashion. IE has never been very much on the Standards compatiability and still is not today. When I see the way IE "mommy's" incorrect HTML coding for people, well, let's not go there. ;)

I don't agree entirely.

Yes Netscape definately led the way right up to HTML 3.2 and with JavaScript.

However when it came to DHTML it was IE that was the innovative product. What were browser specific functions are now standards. (there are still some but not many which are browser specific). div, span and iframe spring to mind.

If we had stuck with Netscape4.x, with it's bad CSS implementation, do you really think we could do some of the groovy stuff that we can do now in BOTH IE and Netscape 6.x+

In fact if you go through the bug reports for Mozilla you see loads of things talking about how IE can do this and how it doesn't work properly in Mozilla... quite funny really.

I think you'll find that <blink> is actually a Netscape specific tag. You might be thinking of <marquee> which is IE specific.

I always find it funny when people used to complain about netscape not rendering their tables but IE did, just because IE rendered unclosed tables. No excuse for poor coding I'm afraid on behalf of the designer.