Hi,

I have finally decided not to worry about the way my site looks in netscape, I now code my sites so they are compatiable with IE only... Do you consider it wrong or bad coding practice?

Does anyone know any accurate up-to-date browser stats?

Up to date statistics:
IE 5/6 had 88% of the browser market in May 2002.

http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2002/May/browser.php

Personally, though, I make sure I look at my site in Mozilla as well as IE, and if possible I would suggest looking at it in Opera as well. Even if you don't optimize it for all browsers, you should at least check it looks presentable.

I feel that ignoring Netscape browsers itsn't wrong in itself but stopping Netscape users from accessing the site (as some sites (like Yahoo Broadcast)) do, is wrong.

Does opera use the IE APIs? I should really download it :-D

AFAIK its completely different. Supposed to be the world's fastest browser and the download is only 3.4MB!

I've been using it a bit recently and found it to be excellent. If it wasn't for the incompatibiltiy problems (like Yahoo Broadcast) I would probably use it permenantly. Certainly worth the download.

Personally, i do not consider netscape when i am designing. but after i finish i just have a look in it to see how it displays..

Well, are you willing to lose 10% of your traffic and very likely 10% of your revenue??? I know I'm not.

In the future, it may become even more less important than it already is, but right now I think that is still a significant chunk to give up so easily. I mean, is it really that hard to make a site Netscape compatible? I don't think so.

Just my humble opinion.

I think making sites viewable in IE5+ and NS6 is reasonable and then have it fail elegantly in NS4 and Opera.

On the Opera front.. people like to argue for Opera and say its the worlds fastest browser but the fact is that its implementation of the DOM sucks. If microsoft cut alot of IE's support for it out then IE would be much faster than Opera. Personally I think Opera is gunna be phased out by the other two. I used to think that it was the wave of the future in browsers but it has just failed to be marketed well enough to home users.
-dk

I'm not sure if my site is indicative of the genral population but at my site, Opera is gaining ground and is used more frequently than Netscape 6, which doesn't appear to have taken off at all.

I really dont care whos surfing my site using Netscape, I have IE5+ as well as im using 800x600px on WindowsXP. I designed my site to look the way i want it, how i see it, on my computer. I try it out on other settings too, but really It doesnt matter to me. Whoever I designed my site with IE5+ so I really dont know if it even works on netscape, i just hope it does. Whoever is using Netscape too bad for them lol.

I personally don't know why anyone would use Netscape. I need to take a peek at the Webmaster-Talk logs and see how many of our visitors/percent are using that browser

Netscape still represents about 10% of web traffic

This is indeed a sizeable chunk. Losing 10% through incompatibility is a grievious sin. You should make sure that your site is viewable in Netscape. Interactive and specific features don't matter so much, but basic visibility is essential.

Why anyone would use Netscape is beyond me. It looks cheesy, its slow, big, heavy (if it can be on my pc?). I would never stray from IE at present to migrate to netscape, i see no feesable reasoning as to why i should do.

I've never used Opera, but I'll look into it.

As far as my site goes...the one i work on as an employee, i preview the pages on every resolution setting on the computer (640x480, 800x600, 1024x768) and ensure that every page works correctly. this site is www.safariquip.co.uk
as the site is frame-based, we use a php browser check to redirect to seperate frame set pages for netscape and IE. this works fine. thus, as this has so far proved to be the only problem between the browsers, we can boast cross-compatibility.

of course, there are always the "lost sheep" who are still stumbling about on netscape 3.1 or IE 3. all we can do is hope, because way back in those dark times, they didn't even have the netscape <blink> command

Ghettocars I guess you can do what you want with your site but unfourtunately most professional webmasters can't afford to have such a self motivated view. If I wanted to design sites for only my screen resolution and browser then it would eliminate lots of work but it would make my website look like crap for some people. In terms of being paid and actually making money you need to be able to judge what will work with browsers and what will not. The only way to know is by trying them all out. Maybe your site would look better if you designed it for others too.
-dk

yes that is true if i am selfish in website making then many people wont go. But I usually dont care about people using Netscape, As for resolutions i do test them out, there is just little i can do about that. Maybe center everything when people use 1024x786.
But i think less than 10% of the people use Netscape, I mean who uses netscape? And plus my site looks good in netscape, maybe some scripts might not work and colors might be distorted with some scripts but it looks OK.
But i get what your trying to say DK thanks for your advice

less than 10% is still 1 in 10. if you get 100 sales a month, if you eliminate netscape from your buying procedure, then theoretically you loose 10% of your income over a year. if you're making $50,000 a year, then you drop to $45,000, and that holiday you were going to go on, or the next level of car you were going to buy (mmm....4.5 litre jaguar xjs flame red convertable...*slobber*) goes out the window.

you can't afford to eliminate 10%, thus you MUST be cross-compatible at all times.

as for resolutions, look at WMT. everything is contained within one "super table" which is centred. optimised for 800x600, and on a greyish b/gd. thus, on a higher resolution, the forum is centred, still looks good, and doesn't get crammed in the top left corner like so many other sites do

yes, im saying less than 10% uses Netscape, I dont think 10% uses it, its more like 2%, and still go to my site on NetScape it looks fine, i checked yesterday. The only thing is it takes a little longer to load and the tables look a little crappy to me but it doesnt matter.

As for resolution you have a point, thats one thing i love about this site, no matter what resolution you are using it still looks good, on my site you cant use any other resolution or else it looks really bad...I have a question how to you center the tables so It can be like that no matter what resolution they are using?
I doubt its just by adding the <center> tags? Or is it?

<center> tags work, as do <table align="center"> and, I think that <p align="center"> round the table should also do it.

thanks david

david its not working for some reason, the site still looks messed up at 1024x768px, i want the table to be centered at that. Anyone has any suggestions?

Thats strange... Whats the URL of the page where it doesn't work?

http://ghettocars.tripod.com/www/homee.htm

see i havent upload the one i modified with what you told me yet, But what i want to do is make that page centered when using 1024x768px.
Check out that link and set your browser to 1024 and youll see what i mean.

Thanks for helping