If AOL drops Explorer, Web developers will need to adjust their one-browser mentality

[aries75]

Originally posted by johnie
Visually a Chromeless Browser is actually a No-No in most cases. Do a poll among web viewers to find out how many hate chromeless pop-ups and I think you will find most hate them.

That depends on how they're used--a skilled designer can make it such that you might not even realize it's a chromeless pop-up. I'm thinking of a situation where you want, say, images or video to appear in a pop-up window and have it so that it looks like it's appearing *within* your flash movie rather than a separate pop-up window--a chromeless pop-up would allow you to do this, and you could have a separate button in your movie to kill the window once the viewer is finished seeing everything in it. Again, they may not even realize it's a chromeless pop-up but think it's just part of the main flash movie (very handy for flash 5 which unlike MX doesn't support dynamic jpeg loading or video).

And of course there's this:

http://javascript.internet.com/page-...lor-wheel.html

...once again, a great little javascript device that *doesn't* work in Netscape.

[johnie]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by aries75

[i]

And of course there's this:

http://javascript.internet.com/page-...lor-wheel.html

...once again, a great little javascript device that *doesn't* work in Netscape.

It does not work becuase it uses MSIE only scripting. It could be made to work in NS but they choose not too. I can point out a ton DHTML games which are NS only. Again there is a reason why there is the ECMA standard. Both Mozilla 5 compliant and IE 5.0 and higher browsers implement all of the ECMA standard.

There is no way that any designer can concivably fool a user that chromless pop-up is actually part of a page. Once the page is closed the Pop-Up will still be there and the user will be mad at you. Also consider how many users use pop-up killers. Pop-Ups generally are a No-No.

[nocrapchurch]

Every time I do a site check for someone who has a pop-up window, I always ask them why they have it. Does it serve a specific purpose? Or is just because you've seen other people do it? No one can ever give me a practical reason why they're doing it, others say its because they like it, and then there are those who are just honest and say its because they thought that's what designers do.

I did the pop-up thing for a while until I got sick of it.

No more pop-ups - Chrome or no chrome, unless they serve a purpose.

A good example of a useful pop-up:
CNN.com uses pop-ups for their "email this page" system on all of their articles. It works very well. It pops-up, I type in the email address, click send, and it closes - I'm still on the page I was sending. It has chrome, but it works very well.

-scott
http://www.scottmanning.com/

[aries75]

Just because a pop-up is chromeless doesn't necessarily mean it can't have a close button (I've seen such windows). Also, pop-ups are used by many reputable sites (such as Nvidia) to display Flash movies in a self-contained window with a fixed resolution. Many sites also use pop-ups to display help information, so one would miss out on a lot by using an extreme pop-up killer that doesn't even allow you to specify which ones to kill (mine, part of Tweak XP, blocks anything x-rated or connected to an ad server...I can also add or remove phrases on its block list).

As for the color wheel link above, it claims to use "cross-browser" mouse event capture, which implies it should work on browers other than ie...not sure why it doesn't. Regardless, the only point I was trying to make is that at this moment, IE seems to make it easier to achieve diverse visual effects which is why many designers would favor it. The fact remains that as long as there are things I can see in IE that I can't see in Netscape, I have no choice but to use IE.

[Ed Mack]

Popups are good for part of a site, but not a site. Your example was great, when you want the user to feel they are still on the same place, but realize there is somthing else to do.

[aries75]

Ezboard uses pop-ups to display info on emoticons, creating links within messages, etc. I think that's a good use of them; a user can quickly look up the info they need in a nice little window and then go back to the message they were writing. Pop-ups can also be used in online portfolio-type sites to display images, video and flash animations in a window sized to fit (e.g. http://www.bananamation.ca).

[johnie]

Originally posted by aries75
Just because a pop-up is chromeless doesn't necessarily mean it can't have a close button (I've seen such windows). Also, pop-ups are used by many reputable sites (such as Nvidia) to display Flash movies in a self-contained window with a fixed resolution. Many sites also use pop-ups to display help information, so one would miss out on a lot by using an extreme pop-up killer that doesn't even allow you to specify which ones to kill (mine, part of Tweak XP, blocks anything x-rated or connected to an ad server...I can also add or remove phrases on its block list).

As for the color wheel link above, it claims to use "cross-browser" mouse event capture, which implies it should work on browers other than ie...not sure why it doesn't. Regardless, the only point I was trying to make is that at this moment, IE seems to make it easier to achieve diverse visual effects which is why many designers would favor it. The fact remains that as long as there are things I can see in IE that I can't see in Netscape, I have no choice but to use IE.

You can use Pop-ups with NS just not chromeless ones. There are some very specific cases where you may want a Pop-Up but not very many and even then it is highly debated.

It is possible to write a page entirely in VML and nothing but MSIE would be able to see it- Are you saying that designers should start doing everything in VML? Sure you don't.

Again as a designer you have a responsibility, in most cases, to try to make your work as viewable to as many people as possible. This includes Wireless devices, Set Top Devices like Liberate and Web TV, and as many browsers as possible. By sticking to W3C and ECMA Recs then validating your site through the free W3C HTML Validator or using HTML Tidy you do this. By doing everthing specifically for MSIE you don't.

[marky176]

Originally posted by johnie
Again as a designer you have a responsibility, in most cases, to try to make your work as viewable to as many people as possible. [/B]

why? who said? i think there may be more exceptions to this rule than you make out...

i aint a missionary here, i'm trying to earn a living.
that's why i use flash, and concentrate on ideas not coding trickery. ok so not everything should be flash, but i am a FREElancer so i can try to choose to work with people that want flash.

yes i do sometimes use javascript (badly) and it cocks up in netscape, but seriously, the clients aren't bothered. I KNOW! how darned irresponsible of them to lose out on all those webtv and AOL people.

i do wish that there was a standard, and that the standard included loads of cool stuff, but that isn't happening so till then i'll stick with 5/MX as the standard because it rocks and i don't care who doesn't click YES to plugins, they can all just suffer

I repeat, not all clients demand TOTAL PENETRATION. I would charge triple to guarantee cross-browser and cross-platform unless using all flash.

Flash MX YAY! can't wait to get stuck in...

[johnie]

Originally posted by marky176

Originally posted by johnie
Again as a designer you have a responsibility, in most cases, to try to make your work as viewable to as many people as possible.

i do wish that there was a standard, and that the standard included loads of cool stuff, but that isn't happening so till then i'll stick with 5/MX as the standard because it rocks and i don't care who doesn't click YES to plugins, they can all just suffer

I repeat, not all clients demand TOTAL PENETRATION. I would charge triple to guarantee cross-browser and cross-platform unless using all flash.

[/B]

The Standard does have cool stuff- In fact it has coolers stuff than what is implemented now, mostly becuase of Microsoft. Check it out http://www.w3c.org - look at SVG and SMIL way cooler than what is out there now.

Their marketing departments do- also this is a key selling point of Flash is that it offers total penetration. It is hard to point out a browser or platform in which Flash has not been ported too. If you do it in Flash with a HTML wraper it reaches Web TV, AOL, Liberate, ETC. With your argument you would be using VML only pages. Honestly when you do something that works only in MSIE do you inform the client that you are excluding 100+Million users? I'm sure if you told them that you were they would have a heart attack or fire you.

[aries75]

Originally posted by johnie
Honestly when you do something that works only in MSIE do you inform the client that you are excluding 100+Million users? I'm sure if you told them that you were they would have a heart attack or fire you.

I would be interested in more information about how you come to this statistic (i.e. link to official stats page, which I haven't been able to find thus far). Also, I'm curious--does that 100 million+ consist of people who DON'T have MSIE, or does it also consist of people who do have IE but choose not to use it as a default browser? (i.e. these people do have IE on their systems but only use it when they absolutely have to in order to view a site).

[clifgriffin]

Okay, I've moved away from the one browser mentality. I already have N6.2 installed. What other browsers would you recommend for a web developer to have installed?

[johnie]

Originally posted by aries75

Originally posted by johnie
Honestly when you do something that works only in MSIE do you inform the client that you are excluding 100+Million users? I'm sure if you told them that you were they would have a heart attack or fire you.

I would be interested in more information about how you come to this statistic (i.e. link to official stats page, which I haven't been able to find thus far). Also, I'm curious--does that 100 million+ consist of people who DON'T have MSIE, or does it also consist of people who do have IE but choose not to use it as a default browser? (i.e. these people do have IE on their systems but only use it when they absolutely have to in order to view a site).

Total number of Internet user * 20% (The amount of the Internet not MSIE)

This is 544.2 Million Total Users (http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/) * 20% = roughly 108,840,000 Users.

AOLs 35 Million is only meager 5% of all net users.

As far as aditional browsers- if you want to test for interoperability. Web TV Browser, Opera Browser, and a Mozilla Distro along with IE would cover most bases- Mostly check it for HTML and CSS Validation using the HTML and CSS Validators at the W3C.

[aries75]

Thanks for posting the survey link--while it shows an estimate of total internet users around the world, it doesn't show a breakdown of browser use. Would you happen to have another link handy that shows percentages for various browsers, i.e. IE 4-5-6, Netscape 4-6, Opera, web tv, etc? Haven't found one on the first site you posted...

[johnie]

Also look at some other stats.

Look under Devices in the link I gave in the above post - projected 1 Billion Mobile Devices attached to the Net by Q2 of 2002. The mobile device market is larger than the PC market almost twice as large.

The PS2 Browser was launched in Japan on March 29 2002 with the US release expected to be 3 months later. There are roughly 60 Million PS2 in use, with over 5 milion sold in last December alone.

Set Top Boxes Liberate, and Open TV, and Web TV only (Remember these are self reported sales figures and are probably fixed):

Open TV: 20 Million Units http://www.opentv.com/index-flash.html
Web TV: 35 Million Web http://developer.msntv.com/
Liberate: 30 Million http://www.liberate.com/

I doubt the validty of these sales figures, as Liberate has a larger pentration than Web TV, but the point here is that there is heck of a lot more TV's, hence more potential Set Top sales, than PCs. However I also doubt the Validty of WebSides story stats that show Non MS Non Mac Uasge at only 3%- The numbers don't add up.

[johnie]

Originally posted by aries75
Thanks for posting the survey link--while it shows an estimate of total internet users around the world, it doesn't show a breakdown of browser use. Would you happen to have another link handy that shows percentages for various browsers, i.e. IE 4-5-6, Netscape 4-6, Opera, web tv, etc? Haven't found one on the first site you posted...

Web side story posts those but I highly suspect its validity since I know for a fact that Web TV users is much higher than what they report.

This is another with 3 different reports:

http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm

Again, It has been shown that these things are unreliable.

[johnie]

More stats- even diffrent from the others I already posted.

http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/bstats/latest.html

http://browserwatch.internet.com/stats/stats.html this one claims IE is only at 65%

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp this one says that IE is at 95% usage

this article explains why browser stats are unreliable http://www.pantos.org/atw/f-35448.html They estimate that NS usage is around 25%

A 15%-20% Non MS stat excluding Mobile devices is probably about right. 15%-20% is probably 87 million to 100 million users.




[Edited by johnie on 04-03-2002 at 11:08 PM]

[decook]

Sure we don't want a browser monopoly by MS, BUT unless 'standards' become standard then I can only see continued frustration from businesses, developers and customers alike.

We live in a world of choice, even if some don't exercise their options. But I cannot help compare the old VHS versus BETAmax video formats where consumer choice and (probably marketing!) finally filters out to one standard.

It is afterall an economic objective for businesses that they get a return on investment as part of any product /service development AND I know that the business I work in was spending 40% of the development costs on 5% of our audience (Mac and Netscape users)! We now no longer officially offer support for Netscape. Consequently web designers, developers and programmers can spend that 40% creating much richer and rewarding code for the commom good of our customers who in turn are buying more.

Sure we get a few complaints, but we can usually pacify all but the most ardent MAC or Netscape users.

...one final thought... The Accessibility issues may well force us all to think again????? http://www.gforceuk.net

[RazoRmedia]

Scott, chromeless windows and popups in general can be used to good measure on some sites where the size needs to be controlled.

http://www.intereurope.co.uk

I did this in a chromeless window because it was a site for the company I worked for at the time and it looked nice, all our clients at the time used win98 and internet explorer so we were sure they could see it. (oh, click on the team page, and move your mouse about. thats not me by the way, thats another bloke called bruce who eats too many pies.))

[RazoRmedia]

site seems to be down at the moment, sorry people, I know you can't wait to see my work

[nocrapchurch]

Originally posted by RazoRmedia
site seems to be down at the moment, sorry people, I know you can't wait to see my work

Well, it looks like your site is still down and chromeless windows are still annoying.

-scott
http://www.scottmanning.com/