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Web authors pledge allegiance to IE | |
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| Time: 08:59 EST/13:59 GMT | News Source: ZDNet | Posted By: Byron Hinson | ||
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When he co-founded Netscape Communications in 1994, Jim Clark introduced a Web browser that promised computer users a way around the Microsoft juggernaut. Now online photo print shop Shutterfly, another Clark-founded venture, has a succinct warning for visitors who come to the site using the latest versions of Netscape: Beware. Versions 6 and higher of the browser are "unsupported," meaning people who use them cannot take advantage of several site features and may run into glitches not found with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, according to a browser error message being published on the site as of last Wednesday. | ||
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| #1 By 7826 (65.205.133.2) at 7/8/2002 9:35:04 AM |
| When we're developing our web publishing products, support of Netscape was hottly debated. Its lack of features and inconsistency between versions as well as a lot of wired problems really costs a lot of extra development resource. |
| #2 By 7826 (65.205.133.2) at 7/8/2002 10:31:32 AM |
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Killunix,
It's not whether or not a few users downloaded NS or not. When you develop a commercial product to be used by corperate customers, you have no choice. Those companies' policy dictates either they all use IE or all use NS. One can only hope those companies' IS dept. know what they are doing. |
| #3 By 61 (65.32.168.97) at 7/8/2002 11:49:26 AM |
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XML: That's on your site. How many people that use NS do you think go to slashdot.org? I'd say the majority do.
The most recent tally says 3% |
| #4 By 8016 (195.92.67.75) at 7/8/2002 12:49:54 PM |
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It's not just IE vs Netscape.
IE on the PC supports/displays things that IE on the Mac does not!! and I'm just talking about the way it renders tables etc. If MS can't even get it's own product to work the same how can other browsers!! |
| #5 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 7/8/2002 2:45:13 PM |
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If you stick to industry standard HTML tags... You can design a site which is pretty universal. Ok, well you won't support Ie versions prior to 5 or Netscape versions prior to 6, but who cares.
The question is mainly do you have the time to test it. I would suspect at least a quick smoke test using Netscape would be worthwhile just to see if the majority of functionality works correctly. |
| #6 By 3653 (63.162.177.140) at 7/8/2002 2:56:10 PM |
| XMLSOAP, I run a 1M+ hits/day site... and we get 1.7% for ALL Netscape versions combined. |
| #7 By 2332 (165.247.1.76) at 7/8/2002 3:13:53 PM |
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I would say that Netscape (including Mozilla) has perhaps 5% market share, which is up quite a bit since Mozilla 1.0 was released.
That being said, 5% means nothing. In order to really be targeted for any kind of development, most agree that there is a critical market share that must be acheived, which is about 30%. This is exactly the target Microsoft had way back when... and once they met it, it was game over. When AOL switches the majority of their customers over to Netscape, they will again have that critical market share, and I think the browser war will be reignited. That's good for consumers (I guess), but bad for developers... who, for the past few years, have enjoyed the bliss of only having to target IE. |
| #8 By 2960 (156.80.64.164) at 7/8/2002 3:18:06 PM |
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What happened to Standards on the Web ?
Why is either Web Browser being targeted? At one time, if you developed strictly to the standards, any web browser would work perfectly. What has changed? TL |
| #9 By 7826 (65.205.133.2) at 7/8/2002 3:55:14 PM |
| #12, how many websites you visited (this site included) use only straight Standard HTML pages? Web sites need to be eye-catching to attract viewers. Standard HTML just don't cut it. Much has changed since Netscape's demise. A lot of new standards come out like XML, DHtml and other stuff. NS just way to slow to catch up with these new stuff. Hence the difficulty for web developer to target the NS. |
| #10 By 61 (65.32.168.97) at 7/8/2002 4:09:07 PM |
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TL:
What happened? Well, it's hard to make a decent looking site that comlies with WC3 standards. |
| #11 By 1845 (12.255.28.36) at 7/8/2002 6:17:37 PM |
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#13 How many software companies write software only for Windows. Windows has much lower market share than IE has market share. If you are willing to cut your potential market (and also cost to obtain that market) in terms of operating system, why wouldn't you be willing to do similarly with a web browser?
#16 Get all the HTML and CSS tutorials you want, if the browser doesn't implement the standards you are targetting in the same way, what good does it do to target the standards. One might also argue that custom extensions which don't appear in the standards (yet) are worth breaking standards compliancy. |
| #12 By 1913 (68.14.48.57) at 7/8/2002 7:08:16 PM |
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Anyone here ever heard of Macromedia Dreamweaver -- it support both browsers, which is the selling point of the program. I'm sure there are limitations, but that is the reason why you have programmers out there (guess it is true about IE, it is easier to work with).
What's ironic is that Jim Clark cannot even make Shutterfly compatible with Netscape. I don't think this is such a big deal because I remember when I started surfing the web, all I saw on the sites that I've visited was "Best viewed" or "Enhanced for" Netscape. -- well the table has turned. This post was edited by rommels on Monday, July 08, 2002 at 19:08. |
| #13 By 1845 (12.255.28.36) at 7/8/2002 7:10:34 PM |
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I won't prove you wrong, because I stopped writing cross browser sites before NS 6 was released. Back then I could have given many examples.
I'm not all too sure that I agree with you when you say the purpose of a web site is to advertise. Some websites are extremely functional. I've written many web applications. The purpose wasn't to advertize it was to do something - training, purchasing, management, etc. If Hotmail, for instance, said it was an IE only site, then it could offer greater functionality to its users and not revert to the lowest common denominator. The difficulty when talking about browser compatibility is defining how compatible to be. IE 5 and above? IE 4 and above? NS 4.x and above? NS 6.x and above? If you had to code to IE 4 and NS 4 and greater, then you have likely more than doubled your development time. If you didn't spend that much more time, you surely didn't give the richest experience possible, because you used the lowest common denominator between the browsers. |
| #14 By 135 (208.50.201.48) at 7/8/2002 7:15:06 PM |
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rommels - I would have to agree. Few seem to remember that the W3C was formed to keep Netscape in check. Many of the reasons why NS 4 sucks so badly is because they refused to work with the W3C on standards and instead went a different way, only at the last minute trying to shoehorn in CSS and other functionality.
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| #15 By 1845 (12.255.28.36) at 7/8/2002 9:50:24 PM |
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Don't get me wrong, I love CSS and HTML 4. You do, however, have to look at the browsers and not the version of CSS and HTML, because even in the 6.x browsers HTML 4.0 and CSS 1 are not 100% correctly implemented.
You're quite right about Hotmail. I was just using it as an example, maybe Yahoo! mail would have been better (so as to avoid thinking of the PR implications of Microsoft blocking non windows non IE users). You do have to draw the line somewhere. I draw it at IE 5. You can draw it earlier. |
| #16 By 1845 (12.255.28.36) at 7/8/2002 10:07:58 PM |
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Has anyone noticed the flaws in this article. Most notable that Microsoft denied access to viewers of msnbc.com. If I remember it was msn.com that denied access.
It's interesting that whoever is on top is all for being proprietary. Whoever is not is all for standards. Netscape had little interest in standards when they had more than 80% of the market. Now that Microsoft has more than 80% of the market they are all for standards. Quite interesting I think. Let us remember that the underdog, more than likely, isn't really interested in what is best for everyone, it is interested in what is better for it and worse for the leader. Netscape, Mozilla, and Opera aren't as noble as they appear. They are simply fighting for standards, since that is the only way they have a prayer in the current browser market. |
| #17 By 2332 (165.247.5.178) at 7/9/2002 2:17:10 AM |
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#13 - "Are you saying you're not willing to put forth the effort to increase your business by 5%? I bet your competitors are."
Oh come on... what was the last company you worked for who insisted the web site target everybody who uses the web? If they say that, it's time to drop the client like a bad habit. 95% viewable is pretty damn good by anybody's standards... and I've been doing web development for as long as anybody can claim to have. At any rate, what I meant was that at 30% market share, developers start to think about taking the extra time and effort (or rather, the clients do) to code specifically for that browser. When that starts to happen, you have content tailored directly to that browser, which locks out the competitors. (Actually, at 30% share, it's probably going to be multi-browser happy, but certainly not at 80, 90, or 95%). "I disagree. This is GREAT for web developers since they can now charge companies even more $$$ for web development that works in all modern browsers. If a web developer is too lazy to do it, once again, I'm sure the competition will take over. " AHhaha.... since when did clients pay more so that their application simply works? It's my experience that clients say "make it work with X% of browsers", but won't offer (or agree to) more money to make that happen. If you say "it works with 95% of browsers", and all you have to do is code for IE, you're golden. You charge the same amount, but make more money. The fact is, Netscape has ALWAYS been HORRIBLE to code for, and any experience developer can't argue with that. IE, for all its faults, is easy to code for. It just works. And when something just works, it takes less time to develop for, and that means you make more money. Me thinks you're a bit naive on the subject... either that, or you're an over zealous developer who rarely meets their own lofty goals. :-) This post was edited by RMD on Tuesday, July 09, 2002 at 02:17. |
| #18 By 1845 (12.255.28.36) at 7/9/2002 3:07:58 AM |
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Thanks hellyon! I try to be rational and I am quite tired of the childish and often quite rude posts that seem to be appearing here more and more frequently.
ECMA, btw, is the standards body that received both C# and the CLI. I think Microsoft submitted it not only to snub Sun but also to gain trust of the development community. People aren't afraid to code in C++ because it isn't specific to Microsoft. Some are loath to code in Visual C++ (that is, making calls to Microsoft extensions to the standard C++ libraries). Since we see that both the language (C#) and the libraries and runtime (CLI) are standards, developers need not fear that Microsoft can change its mind about functionality, interoperability, or whatever that the .NET vision promised with respect to the language and platform. This is something that Sun can't say about Java, J2EE, or Sun ONE. |
| #19 By 8016 (195.92.67.66) at 7/9/2002 5:49:47 AM |
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A lot of the problem is the simple little things like being able to have a plain HTML table with a coloured border (say blue) in IE you can just put
<TABLE BORDER="1" CELLSPACING="0" BORDERCOLOR="#C0DBE9"> But Netscape, Opera and Mozilla display a gray 3D border. or like ActiveWin have done on this page put <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLSPACING="0" style="border: 1 solid #C0DBE9"> But then Netscape, Opera and Mozilla don't display any border. I know that it may not be standard HTML to have a coloured border on a table, but why not? it's a simple thing!! |
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