Isn't It About Time To Say Goodbye To Netscape 4?
As web developers we are constantly attempting to achieve complete cross browser compatibility for our client's websites. It is a frustrating job at best but we almost always manage to get the site working, by hook or by crook with one glaring exception, Netscape version 4 browsers. In their day they were a great browser even though many developers hated it because it enforced the rules to the letter. But it's time has passed and we as developers have had to make a very difficult decision, whether to code our sites in an outdated, clunky and non-standards compliant format or to act as if this browser doesn't exist.
Why Is Netscape Such a Problem?
Netscape was built prior to the full implementation of Cascading Style Sheets, basically to be compliant with HTML
3.2 standards. It lost it's battle to beat Microsoft in 2002 and was bought by AOL who promptly released a brand new version (6.0) that was the programmers joke of the year. Because of this AOL purchase many
Netscape purists
refused to upgrade to the newest versions (not that we could have blamed them) and yes some of these people are still using it today. The
numbers are dwindling every day according to the w3c browser use statistics
(0.2 % in December 2004) but we get a client or two every once in while that asks if our websites will work in it. Our answer, plain and simple is no. At this point our business if focused on fast, efficiently coded,
standards compliant that focuses on both accessibility and search engine friendly. To achieve these goals we use fully CSS,
XHTML 1.0 or at minimum HTML 4.01 Transitional code.
Netscape 4x will simply crash when attempting to open one of these pages. The code is literally so foreign
that Netscape doesn't know what to do with it, gives the old
This program has encountered an error and will now close
and then does just that, shuts down. Would we prefer it a different way? Yes. But to give our clients the best code for their
dollar we really have no choice.
Strictly A Business Decision
So if you're curious about Netscape 4x and if your website should support it we offer this advice. What is more important to you as a business person? Higher rankings and better indexing in the search engines, easier accessibility to more clients regardless of their abilities, the ability to serve up pages to your clients faster and on more and more types of machines (palm pilots, cell phones) or the support of a browser that 0.2% of the web surfing population refuses to let go of? Once you look at the facts we feel the decision is simple.
Lissa Lee, bathandbodycare.com | More Testimonials >>