http://www.wpdfd.com/forums/wpdfd/browsers/backward_compatibility/ A Browsers forum thread at WPDFD.com en-us 01/13/04, 013 54 2004 2004:%i:1073984093 03:54:53 06/07/13, 158 22 2013 2013:%i:1370596952 05:22:32 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss NineLabs Framework Feed Generator sitemaster@wpdfd.com sitemaster@wpdfd.com http://www.wpdfd.com/forums/wpdfd/browsers/backward_compatibility/#p240
Thanks,

Terry

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You are probably safe enough with HTML 4, but you can only use CSS for basic font styling. The worst that can happen then is that the old browser user sees the wrong type face.

In the murky depths of WPDFD, there are still some pages from 1996. They used CSS inside tables and looked exactly as intended in Netscape 4 and were readable, if not perfect in version 3 browsers.

JavaScript is also a problem in old browsers. There have been several subtle changes over the years and what we take for granted now can break. If your eCommerce is done entirely on the server side, you don't need to worry to much but if there's some JavaScript going on in there for form checking or something like that, you need to check it out.

Joe]]> 01/13/04, 013 20 2004 2004:%i:1073989258 05:20:58 http://www.wpdfd.com/forums/wpdfd/browsers/backward_compatibility/#p241 http://www.wpdfd.com/forums/wpdfd/browsers/backward_compatibility/#p242
Browser stats worked today, though, so it looks like I'll be pretty safe as long as I maintain compatibility for IE5 and higher, based on stats on my site:

75.1% MSIE 6
15.8% MSIE 5
 2.8% Netscape 5
 1.5% other: Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)
 1.1% other: contype

The balance are taken up mostly by other 'bot' programs.

That will make the compatibility issue a whole lot easier to deal with!

Terry

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Has Netscape 4.x finally bit the dust? I sure hope so!]]> 01/13/04, 013 36 2004 2004:%i:1074022577 14:36:17 http://www.wpdfd.com/forums/wpdfd/browsers/backward_compatibility/#p243 http://www.wpdfd.com/forums/wpdfd/browsers/backward_compatibility/#p244
The one thing I have been trying to convince our clients is to move on and bit the dust (per se). Trying to accommodate 1-2% of the audience and limiting new features to the 98% doesn't seem quite right. ]]> 01/30/04, 030 29 2004 2004:%i:1075480154 11:29:14 http://www.wpdfd.com/forums/wpdfd/browsers/backward_compatibility/#p244 http://www.wpdfd.com/forums/wpdfd/browsers/backward_compatibility/#p245
My strategy was to leave her well-poised for a redesign: everything is marked up semantically, so the simple table can be stripped out leaving a coherent remainder, which can then be restyled with positioning.

That's the plan anyway.

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