Re: Professional Question - Dealing with MANY ppl on one site

>>>>
Today I received an e-mail from ONE member who is using Netscape 4 and
is complaining that the "unlinked" pages in the navigation are Black,
therefore they are hard to see. 
<<<<

Remember this: thank that person. Probably others visitors to the site
will have the same complaint, they just will not email them to you.

If you go and disable CSS and then look at your web page, you will see
basically what he is seeing.

And, basically, the flaw that occurs isn't something that affects the
formatting or the style, but is a critical flaw, in that users who have
turned off CSS in their browser will see a site that is almost
impossible to navigate.

>>>>
1) Would you for the relatively small % redo the unlinked pages to make
sure they are "white" in Netscape 4.
<<<<

As noted above, this isn't just the looks, this is a critical problem in
that it makes the site extremely hard to use. 1 out of 20 people is a
considerable number for a Chamber of Commerce site whose main purpose is
to promote the city. Using your numbers, 1 out of 20 people will be put
off by the difficulty in navigation.

>>>>
2) Since I am using style sheet link and css in header what would be the
fastest way to "update" all these "black" unlinked pages?
<<<<

The problem is that you have an interaction between the bgcolor of each
table data cell where this occurs and the style sheets. If the
backgroud-color of the TD's were set using a style sheet, it would be
easy, in fact it would not be a problem:

The background color would then, for that user, be white, which would
easily show the links and the visited links.

So, probably the fastest way to correct the problem would be to do this:

1) Do a search and replace for all the files

Search: bgcolor="#006600"

Replace: class="greenit"

In your main.css file, add the following:

.greenit { background-color: #006600; }

>>>>
3) What do you think the problem is with his e-mail? (I tried it on my
Netscape 6 box and it worked just fine)
<<<<

Your guess is as good as mine. You have a standard mailto link with
nothing abnormal like trying to append a subject. I think your customer
has a misconfiguration. 

>>>>
4) Would you restrain yourself from telling this one person to go jump
in a lake?
<<<<

Yes, you are a professional. This is a user who has tested the site, and
found it wanting. This is a good thing.

Ok, now about your stats: if the site has not been rolled out yet, the
stats are pretty worthless. Heck, when I first work on sites they come
up just the opposite (I use Galeon with the Mozilla/Gecko renderer for
my default browser).

Ponder these:

www.thecounter.com
Netscape 4.x= 4.0%

www.browserwatch.com:
Netscape Navigator = 19.3%

internet.com (all 14 web sites)
Netscape 4.x = 8.33%

My locate camalott.com stats:
Netscape 4.x = 5.4%



-- 


Jim Tom Polk -:- jtpolk(at)texas.net -:- http://camalott.com/~jtpolk/	
	''You might as well fall flat on your face as 
	  lean over too far backwards.''      --James Thurber--
   "The Universe is run by the complex interweaving of three 
          elements: energy, matter and enlightened self-interest." 
 		- G'Kar  "Survivors"                                  

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