Re: Prefer Netscape (was: Lies, Damned Lies & Statistics)

>>>As I started off saying, coding 'to the standards' is not babying
Netscape.  What happens when AOL switches to their own products?  What then
when 22 million plus users now use Netscape instead of IE?  <<<<

There seems to be some confusion regarding the concept of coding to
standards here:

* NN4.x tends to interpret HTML tags more strictly than IE5.x thus making it
more compliant in that area.

* IE5.x has much better CSS support than NN4.x, thus making it more
compliant in that area.

* NN6, assuming it ever completes (common phrase to attach this product for
the last year!), will support both areas better than either of the two
above.  If AOL ever switches, I would imagine this would be the one they
switch too, and it doesn't understand NN4 code anyway...:).

The fact is that we live in an environment the changes almost daily...new
advances, techniques and standards (Recommendations) appear on a regular
basis.  As with ANY software in such an environment, NN4.x has grown old and
is going the way of the 3.x browsers.  This does not mean MS rules the
world...it simply means NN4.x is outdated.  So is IE4, and all v3 browsers.
Not totally dissappeared, but certainly outdated.

On the other hand, NN4.x still works, and will probably be present for
another year to a lesser and lesser extent.  Unfortunately, it will probably
break more often as it will be the only browser in the field supporting it's
own version of DHTML, etc.  Even it's successor will break on sites designed
for 4.x.

For anyone who is tallying up the state of current decisions:

We design to standards (W3C Recommendations), favoring CSS support.  We
consider NN4.x as a backwards compatiblity target, and pages are intended to
degrade gracefully for it.  We do not, except for special request, code
multiple versions of DHTML or other trimmings.  We do sniff, but mostly for
Win-nonWin in order to apply stylesheets (font-related differences mostly)
evenly across Win/Mac/Linux.  We don't sniff for Win NN4.x specifically.

I expect that NN6 will be a winner once it is done.  Perhaps not perfect
first time out, but I believe the code is Open Source...?  That means anyone
with the skill can dig in and play with a software package that was based on
compliance...and there's lots of hackers out there.  IE will have plenty of
competition as improvements/upgrades/addons for NN6 begin hitting the Web.

D

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