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

[catbert303]

I check my hotmail in K-Meleon, and hotmail nags me every time about how my viewing experience may not be as good as it could be, and they ask me to get NS or IE. But, it is identical to it in IE, though they won't let me access some fetures, bet you they will work, but with M$ support doesn't exist. I have emailed every site that stopped me from doing somthing in K-Meleon, and told them it works perfectly fine (for the ones that do). They are excluding me from using there site for no fair reason. That's hardly good buisness.

When microsoft re designed the hotmail site a while back, they started blocking opera users from it claiming the browser didn't support xhtml. I imagine there were some red faces when it was shown that opera did support xhtml and infact the hotmail site didn't validate as xhtml. Made me smile anyway

[marky176]

Originally posted by david petley
Why should they have to do any work to be a customer/user of the website in question?

...

And "phooey to them" is not the response that any CEO worth his salary will accept from any designer, whether they are employee or self-employed contractor. If the company is thinking right, they will have the exact opposite feeling about accessability.

david p.

OK, why should customers have to do work?
It's all about branding and loyalty (unless your selling some faceless commodity)
Believe it or not, i think people actually ENJOY working as long as they are rewarded. David you say NOBODY waits for entertainment - i disagree, in my experience people will email me if they're having trouble (for WHATEVER reason) and ask for help. This is because they WANT the content, and don't want to accept second best. Maybe I do lose 8% of people, but tht's cool i'm just happy to be here.

And have you ever seen a queue outside a nightclub? I've been in one for four hours and it was a really good night regardless.

Athletes work hard for gold medals.
You dress up in stiff expensive clothes for a ball.
It's rewarding. If a Killa Kela fan wants to see photos of Killa Kela they will keep trying till they get there, simple as.

please stop trying to say I'm somehow unprofessional for not caring about netscape 6. We all have our own strategies. Nobody REALLY knows what's best. How many of us even SAW the web coming way back in 1990?

[Ed Mack]

"Marky", have you ever sat down and watched the average joe visit a site? They don't understand the meaning of javascript not working, they don't know how to view the source and hunt down the link they want. If they can't do somthing quickly, they will move on and soon forget about you. People who win gold medals are world famous, people who manage to visit a site are one in millions. You dress up because of peer presure and perhaps wanting to win a prize. I would like to see peer presure forcing someone to access a poorly made site. Nightclubs too, is it particualarly difficult to stand in a line? Boring but not difficult.

Ask the average computer user to re-install there borswer and get a VRML plugin and the Flash plugin. They probably wont do any of them. They arn't going to jump through firey hoops for you, no matter how amazing you are.

Your job as a web designer is to design for the audience, not to just ignore them and hope they go away. If you can't manage to keep within standards, maybe those visitors are better of somwhere else then.

I, as a faithful K-Meleon fan, feel offended that you will willfully exclude me because of lazyness. And the irony is, a simple page would do it's job better at delivering content. If you can't even deliver content, why are you trying all this other stuff?

I do hope that more people move away from IE and standards become standard, people like you will have to wake up. If I was your boss, and knew you were knowingly sending people off and making some site that they couldn't use, you would be gone. I don't know your boss, but he probably doesn't know the whole story to it's extreams.

When somthing bad comes on TV, and what they want is after it, the person will flick over, and be gone in a flash. WHY? Because it's easy and it's only their time they have to lose. Why bother frustrating themselves with crud TV? There may be goal at the end, but they could just as easily get the goal some other way.

[aries75]

Originally posted by Ed_Mack
I, as a faithful K-Meleon fan,

Now I'm dying of curiousity--what's so special about K-Meleon? Why use it as opposed to other browers? What makes it better? I went to their homepage and looked around for a bit, and couldn't really tell (all it seemed to be was something with an IE-like interface but powered by Gekko/mozilla).

Speaking of convenience, I find it hard to believe that people will drift from IE to other browsers since IE is already bundled w/ windows and as you said, users like to do as little work as possible (therefore why bother to download a new browser when you have one with your OS already?)

Anyway, I'm not trying to be confrontational, I'm just curious as to what makes that browser better (like I said earlier in this thread, I used to be a Netscape fan for the longest time until I got sick of not being able to see certain things and figured, heck, IE comes with Win XP already so might as well use it...and of course since it's so tightly intergrated with the OS, lots of things are faster and more convenient...what can I say, I took the path of least resistance)

[catbert303]

Speaking of convenience, I find it hard to believe that people will drift from IE to other browsers since IE is already bundled w/ windows and as you said, users like to do as little work as possible (therefore why bother to download a new browser when you have one with your OS already?)

I use opera a lot of the time (not all, but a lot) for a couple of reasons.

1. The computer in my office has an alarm that sounds ocassionally while using internet explorer for prolonged periods (an hour or so), the compting services people at the university have been unable to find out why it does this (no other pc's in the office do) so I installed opera and I use that.

2. I find opera a better web browser to use than internet explorer, I like being able to zoom in on the page, I like being able to highlight words in a page and search for them in amazon/google/... and I like doing mouse gestures

[Musicman]

Originally posted by aries75
...and of course since it's so tightly intergrated with the OS, lots of things are faster and more convenient...

like acquiring virus... check recent thread about http://www-out.y363.com

There were quite a few posts in this thread stating that IE works better with flash than the other browsers... could someone try and figure out how often I - and quite a few others - had to explain in the help forums that someone's mail form did not work because they were using IE

just my 2c

Musicman

[johnie]

Originally posted by aries75

Originally posted by Ed_Mack
I, as a faithful K-Meleon fan,

Now I'm dying of curiousity--what's so special about K-Meleon? Why use it as opposed to other browers? What makes it better? I went to their homepage and looked around for a bit, and couldn't really tell (all it seemed to be was something with an IE-like interface but powered by Gekko/mozilla).

Its only 3 Megs, Loads Faster, It has built in Pop-Up killer software in it, It can be set so that parts of your chrome never go away, You can build aditional features into it yourself, You can set it to mask itself as NS or MSIE, Is a lot lighter on resources, It is nearly completly customizable-which makes it popular in Library settings, and less prone to Viruses. If you throw in some diffrent apps and diversify them you are less likely to be affected by virus. What more reasons do you need?

Think, when was the last time you heard of a Virus hitting Pegasus mail? Diversty makes it harder on Virus writers to hit any one platform not to mention other software makers are more woried about Security than features.
[Edited by johnie on 04-05-2002 at 09:36 PM]

[aries75]

Originally posted by johnie
Think, when was the last time you heard of a Virus hitting Pegasus mail? Diversty makes it harder on Virus writers to hit any one platform

That's true, which is why I NEVER use Microsoft Outlook for any reason (have Pegasus mail instead )

As for IE, no security problems thus far; ironically enough, I remember a friend of mine telling me that he stopped using Netscape and switched to IE after Netscape let a virus in (then again I don't know the full details of that situation).

As for the thread Musicman refered to, I remember encountering a similar situation with Netscape (although of course my registry wasn't affected). It was really weird in that this site made itself my homepage, and no matter what I typed into the URL box, it wound up going to this site. After I wiped out my cache, however, the problem went away (I believe this happened w/ Netscape 4.75) To this day I still don't know exactly what happened, nor do I remember the URL of that malicious site...

[Musicman]

Hi,

it seems to me that to spread virus through browsing, with IE you can have
- registry script
- activex that installs itself
- misleading mime types (you click on a .txt or .pdf file that would normally open in browser, and since the browser knows it is a disguised exe, you get a dialog whether you want to open or save the file - still showing the harmless file name
- social engineering (suggest to the visitor it is worthwhile to doubleclick that strange file)
- popup magic: while you are fighting to close hundreds of popup, you might click on something you did not want to
The first two of these simply do not apply to other browsers, the third one does not seem to be a problem either (you may get a download box asking for an exe, with no open option; you may as well have the browser faithfully open the exe as text file, with all gibberish on the screen and probably something like "this prog requires windows to run" near the top). The other two threats still exist

Musicman

[Ed Mack]

I got K-Meleon due to Jonies reasons, plus I'm sick of bulky web browsing, I just want simplicity and speed. It has a symbolic loader, you just click the icon in your system tray and instantly K-Meleon pops up.

Also, standards. I know, if it works in K-Meleon, it'll work in any other decent browser.

[marky176]

Originally posted by Ed_Mack
"Marky", have you ever sat down and watched the average joe visit a site?

have you read any of my previous posts? I'm not talking about average joes here i'm talking about more specialist marketing. And yes of course i've seen that, how rude of you to ask the question.

They don't understand the meaning of javascript not working, they don't know how to view the source and hunt down the link they want.

have you read any of my previous posts? i try to avoid javascript at all costs and use flash.

If they can't do somthing quickly, they will move on and soon forget about you.

have you read any of my previous posts? I deal with smaller more loyal audiences and they all help each other out. Once net-literate, they get flash. It's so easy.

I would like to see peer presure forcing someone to access a poorly made site.

work in a different market sector then. I assure you it happens all the time with my work. And who said anything about POORLY MADE sites?

Ask the average computer user to re-install there borswer and get a VRML plugin and the Flash plugin.

VRML? now you've really lost me.

Your job as a web designer is to design for the audience, not to just ignore them and hope they go away. If you can't manage to keep within standards, maybe those visitors are better of somwhere else then.

Now you're telling me my job without reading my posts! I just disagree with you and i didn't appoint you Lord of All Internet Practice.
I am trying to stick up for the OTHER way of doing things. A way that might not suit your industry but SUITS MINE.

I don't know your boss, but he probably doesn't know the whole story to it's extreams.

I am the boss. for the third time this thread, please understand there are MANY ways to use the internet and flash, not one set of rules. It's always the pro-standards people who shout loudest, so i have to get in here and show readers there is another way to look at it. Use the web for more than just ecommerce and "content delivery". Look at it from more angles than just coding. It's funny, you ask a coder the most important thing and he says CODING, you ask the brand manager and he says BRANDING, you ask the designer and he says DESIGN. Well, i'm a director so i have to balance all these things, and surprise surprise, single factors do not win over a balanced approach.

Also you can't even spell or punctuate, but that's a story for another thread i feel.

[dylh]

Let's be honest. All developers SHOULD be testing for NS but I think we all can agree the frustration is hardly worth it, at times. The truth of the whole matter is, does anyone on the planet want to feed Microsoft's greed??? I don't think so. If NS put out a decent product this discussion would never have ocurred. It wouldn't even need to be a better product than IE, just comparable. My company has stated it will support the latest two versions of IE and Netscape, except for NS 6. Talk about a step backward.

When GIANT companies get into a pissing match only developers and viewers lose out.

[Ed Mack]

I havn't read any of your other post's and sincerly apologise about getting things wrong.. It's what I'm good at. As for spelling, it's a hopeless persuit

[johnie]

Originally posted by dylh
Let's be honest. All developers SHOULD be testing for NS but I think we all can agree the frustration is hardly worth it, at times. The truth of the whole matter is, does anyone on the planet want to feed Microsoft's greed??? I don't think so. If NS put out a decent product this discussion would never have ocurred. It wouldn't even need to be a better product than IE, just comparable. My company has stated it will support the latest two versions of IE and Netscape, except for NS 6. Talk about a step backward.

When GIANT companies get into a pissing match only developers and viewers lose out.

The latest Builds of Mozilla, aproching the 1.0 build, are comparable to MISE. In Fact NS 6.2.2 is pretty good and a huge improvement over NS pr anything and NS 6.0. Netscape 6.0 and 6.01 were dogs and they finally shifted to Mozilla code in NS 6.1. Version 6.2 actually got extremly good reviews by the press and was generally well recieved.

To be honest they should have called NS 6.1 NS 6.5 or 7.0 but then people would accuse them of playing with distro numbers like they accused them of doing when 6.0 came out. The press had it wrong. there was a NS 5.0 and if you are really interested you can download its source code and build it -it was not a Marketing ploy to come out with 6.0. What happend was NS 5.0 was handed over to the OS Mozilla project instead of being comercially released. 6.0 was built on NS 5.0. 6.1 was when Netscape scrapped their code and started using Mozilla code and the quality difference was remarkable. Your bosses are probably erronously lumping all NS 6.X distros in the same boat which really isn't fair.

The newest versions of Mozilla are good for viewers and developers as it is very tight on W3C Standrds. The closeness to standards means that a page designed to look good in Opera, which also is close to standards, and will display in MSIE. In Other words Netscape is making it easier for you to design 1 page. This, and customer complaints, is probably why Bank Of America changed its stance on The NS browser and stoped locking it out. Other sites are also comming around.

[jstarkey]

Originally posted by Ed_Mack

I havn't read any of your other post's and sincerly apologise about getting things wrong.. It's what I'm good at. As for spelling, it's a hopeless persuit

Don't worry Ed. We're used to TheEnigma.

[Musicman]

It seems there are different reasons not to support all browsers, and of course you would rate each reason differently
a) extra cost involved - it seems that there is no longer that much effort to make a compatible page, if you consider only latest browsers and do not want to use platform specific plugins.

b) ignorance: there are sites that say "we are on the leading edge of technology", and if you look at their scripting, it is: if it aint IE, it must be netscape - if it aint windows, it must be mac. This particular site used a faulty player detect movie, too; and when I clicked the "I have correct player" link, I was sent back to the detect movie.
One time someone asked me to look at a site with a scrolling nav, and I did not get any navbar but just a JS error complaining about movie not being an object. Playing around a little, that pretending to use MSIE or Netscape 6.31 (!) both added a movie to the page, while N4.x or any Mozilla would just get the JS to set a variable in it. Of course no N6 browser could handle passing in variables, and looking further at the code revealed it did not do anything useful. I mailed the webmaster, and according to the response they had excluded N4 because browser integration did not work with it... I am sure the designer there was proud of the php hiding the movie from "incapable" browsers
My local bank supports netscape in their scripting, they even detect linux os, but the information is not used anywhere. They do have a nag popup, however, telling me that I need at least 16bit color to use the site and I should use windows control panel to change. Apart from the fact that probably a white background with black and red numbers should be sufficient to manage a bank account, the message appears with 256 color and true color settings alike.
I am sure some of the designers involved got hired because they had passed one or the other certificate exam ... we probably have to educate the teachers here

c) overestimating one's capabilities: N6 browsers do not display pages too well that claim to be 4.01 while they are not. This may be a fault of an individual coder as well as of some crappy html software that just outputs the ominous header

d) "design requirements" - if a designer really thinks that configuring scrollbars is essential for a site, they should consider that someone using a different browser might be willing to view a page with odd-looking scrollbars if the content is interesting enough. It is not that much effort to even put up a message "we designed the site for IE. You will be able to view it, but some features may look odd"

e) malicious intent, as in the opera vs. hotmail example above

Musicman

[marky176]

Originally posted by dylh
...does anyone on the planet want to feed Microsoft's greed...

When GIANT companies get into a pissing match only developers and viewers lose out.

right on. AOL's greed is even bigger though, so DOWN WITH NETSCAPE AND IE!!

And don't worry Ed, i'm never understood.. whether i punctuate and spell correctly or not

[Ed Mack]

Yes, (jumping the bandwagon)

Everybody get K-Meleon, the world would be a much better place.

[TheOriginalFlashDavo]

All these arguements....

I don't give a flying f#@* what web browser is "standard", but I certainly wish one was to make it easier to develop applications. It seems that sometimes you need to spend just as long making it cross-browser compliant as it takes to develop in the first place.

Doesn't that seem utterly, utterly rediculous to you??

As much as I'm not entirely happy with how MS have competed n the browser war, you'd have to be very one eyed to not acknowledge it's the best browser out there, and it would be nice of every bloody Mozilla developer stopped thinking of MS technology as coming from the devil and just moved their a.r.s.e.s to implement al the features it supports, THEN we could spend our time developing great applications rather than making basic functions cross browser compliant.

Get over this "love/hate" thing with MS and work with what's best, whatever brand we're talking about.

Whooooo.... got that off my chest...

[bambamzap]

After posting here in this thread and recieving the replies I did (especially from Johnie) I have come to a new understanding. Thanks Johnie!

I still believe business should spend most of their time and money building what the majority of users can do and not waste their time trying to cater to the minority that can't or won't comply.

This being said, I have re-looked into the scripting of my site to find I had made a few errors (we are only human) one of which was the html embeding for a flash movie. No wonder my site didn't work in NN.

I am only one opinion of many here on this forum but I can't just sit here and not add my two cents any longer.

As stated previously, Flash movies run the same on any browser with exception to the fscommand. Once this is understood then the only difference between browsers would be the html tags and the javascripts (I think) which we use to build our sites.

So the question is...

Why not build the entire site in Flash? As far as I know, Flash can do everthing needed with only a couple of exceptions like displaying jpegs and gifs, uploading files, and displaying non Flash content. In these situations you can use a pop-up window.

With a little creativity and some server side scripting you can build any kind of site, fully dynamic which will run on any browser that can run Flash. Thus, there shouldn't be a problem bulding for multiple browsers.

So the answer is...

Build 100% Flash sites!

just food for thought...