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From: Lori K. Brown
Date: Fri, Oct 25 2002 11:48AM
Subject: Re: Supporting NS4 [WAS: Re: Formatting lists]
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No such luck, Leo.

Why?

The government, particularly the military and defense-related
endeavors, is still a widespread and committed user of that
miserable browser. We live in browser detection hell because we
cannot count on our customer base to upgrade.

There are communities who are going to take a very long time to
upgrade to real browsers. Oh that it were not so. And even though
various metrics on the web like 'the Counter' make it appear that NN
4.7x is finally fading, we find that our mileage varies, big time.

Wired can let NN4.7x lapse as a supported browser because it's
viewership is so, well, wired. Can you imagine any committed readers
of that site having the same bizarre unreasoning resistance to
upgrading that a govt. agency or academic institution would? No, of
course not. But those of us who write for a more diverse and less
cutting-edge audience are stuck with it for a while yet, sadly.

Lori Kay Brown
User Interface Engineer
SiteScape, Inc.
E-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =


-------- Original Message --------

==> From: "Leo Smith" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
==> Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 14:31:16 -0400

NS4 is finally starting to die out....

Wired.com just redesigned their new site with complete separation of
structural content from presentation...

In NS4, the user simply gets a linearized presentation of the
content...like it would perhaps be delivered to a PDA or cell
phone...

This, I think, is the way to go now with regards to NS4 support when
using CSS - if Wired can be so bold (a major commercial content
oriented site), I think we all probably can..

Leo.

> > As a workaround, though, you might consider using <ul> markup
with > > the numbers as explicit content, and a CSS rule that
suggests > > suppression of bullets: <style type="text/css"> ul li {
> > list-style-type: none; } </style> > > A note of warning: this
yields ? for bullets in NS4 on macs. Not sure > about Windows. > >
emma >

>



Leo Smith Web Designer/Developer USM Office of Publications and
Marketing University of Southern Maine 207-780-4774

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From: Leo Smith
Date: Mon, Oct 28 2002 6:52AM
Subject: Re: Supporting NS4 [WAS: Re: Formatting lists]
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> Wired can let NN4.7x lapse as a supported browser because it's
> viewership is so, well, wired.

By "supported" browser, you are referring to presentational support.
The content at Wired's site is fully accessible (in the broadest
sense) to any device that can read basic structural html. Therefore,
their site can support any and every browser.

Can you imagine any committed readers
> of that site having the same bizarre unreasoning resistance to
> upgrading that a govt. agency or academic institution would?

I work in an academic institution, and folks are generally very
willing to upgrade when I point out to them that NS4 is not a
standards compliant browser (very powerful words, even to those
that are not tech savy). Also, when they realize that they are losing
some functionality (our site uses print media stylesheets which do
not work with NS4) they can also be quick to upgrade. We are at a
user base of about 8% for NS4, down from 15% in February. Other
universities around the country are reporting a user base as low as
3% for NS4.


No, of
> course not. But those of us who write for a more diverse and less
> cutting-edge audience are stuck with it for a while yet, sadly.

If you are truly writing for everybody, regardless of the technology
that they are using, then you might want to think again. PDA and
cell phone Web access may well explode in the next few
years.....providing anything other than structural linearized content
to these devices (especially as they keep getting smaller!) does
not seem very feasible.

Leo.


Leo Smith
Web Designer/Developer
USM Office of Publications and Marketing
University of Southern Maine
207-780-4774


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From: Lori K. Brown
Date: Mon, Oct 28 2002 10:01AM
Subject: Re: Supporting NS4 [WAS: Re: Formatting lists]
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Leo Smith wrote:

>>Wired can let NN4.7x lapse as a supported browser because it's
>>viewership is so, well, wired.
>>
>>
>
>By "supported" browser, you are referring to presentational support.
>The content at Wired's site is fully accessible (in the broadest
>sense) to any device that can read basic structural html. Therefore,
>their site can support any and every browser.
>
I am referring to presentational support not because I'm not smart
enough to care about standards, but because our customers, who buy our
software, care a whole lot about presentational support. No quantity of
evangelization about standards is a satisfactory answer to 'It looks
awful in Netscape.' Since they care about presentational support, guess
what? So do I?

The problem w/ this discussion and it's analogues throughout the web
authoring community is that folks on your side think that folks on my
side are unimpressed with you being right. You are right. But being
right doesn't buy our software. If we have customers (and we do have a
significant number of them) who are still using NN4.7x and are unhappy
with how no-tables coding looks on their browsers, I have to listen.
It's my job. And writing two versions of every single screen in our
product (a compliant version and a 'pretty tables for brain dead
browsers' version) is truly not viable. So I make compromises all the
time to get things to look as reasonably similar across good and bad
browsers as I can, with a preference for compliance when it doesn't
completely fall over an barf on Netscape.

Everyone says that accessing the web via PDA, webphone, and digital
toaster oven is going to drive a stampede to pristinely standards-based
coding, but I haven't seen it yet. We have a PDA mode for our software,
but there doesn't seem to be much demand for it yet.

Lori


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From: Leo Smith
Date: Mon, Oct 28 2002 2:33PM
Subject: Re: Supporting NS4 [WAS: Re: Formatting lists]
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<snip>
If we have customers (and we do have a significant number of
them) who are still using NN4.7x and are unhappy
with how no-tables coding looks on their browsers, I have to listen.
It's my job. And writing two versions of every single screen in our
product (a compliant version and a 'pretty tables for brain dead
browsers' version) is truly not viable. So I make compromises all the
time to get things to look as reasonably similar across good and
bad browsers as I can, with a preference for compliance when it
doesn't completely fall over an barf on Netscape.
</snip>

I do understand where you are coming from....When I redesigned
our University site 8 months ago, I had to design for NS4 as the
stats were significant to warrant that.

I guess having gone through all of that compromise, and seeing the
NS4 user stats fall so much over the past 8 months, (and will only
fall further), I would be far less willing to do it again.

I am not sure that we are on different sides. I used to be skeptical
of such standards compliance arguments as I felt that I needed to
design for the "real world." That has changed though, and I do think
that such an approach is more beneficial in the long run in many
ways.

Is there a way to educate your customers about the benefits of
upgrading? There was an interesting article a while back on A LIST
APART which talks about this kind of thing....it anyone is
interested:

http://www.alistapart.com/stories/csstalking/

best,

Leo.





Leo Smith
Web Designer/Developer
USM Office of Publications and Marketing
University of Southern Maine
207-780-4774


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