OT: Your Opinion-- NS vs. IE

Anon

Hello, I know this is PHP builder but wanted to get your opinion on building web site for netscape vs. IE. ((I value other developers opinions))

I understand that Netscape is basically going away, since microsoft is won the broswer war.

I also understand that LOTS of people use netscape.

What do you think about the 2 browsers as to what you should develope on?

Also, this is why I am bringing this up:

The Background attribute of the Table tag is not supported inNetscape Navigator 4.0.
Anyone know of a work-around.

THANKS

junebug

there are more browsers out there than that. opera. konqueror. gnome's browser that i can't think of that runs off the mozilla engine. mozilla itself.

just design your site right. to standards. just make sure all the information can be seen. this idea of designing for only one browser is just annoying.

Anon

You stated that MS had won the browser war, on the contrary my friend.

Since Aol aquired Netscape back in the day -- they are now incorporating it into CompuServ and Aol software. So when people change their version of their ISP software, people will switch their browser type.

This will be after their contract with MS ends, which is soon (or its already done?).

Have you checked out Hbo.com or Cnn.com?
Take a look at the toolbar and you will realise that it isn't Ms who's winning 😉
Btw: This was pointed out to me (its not an original idea)

From a technological standpoint: Netscape handles tables (especially nested ones, pretty bad).

My 2 cents.

-- Mick

vsego

I thought I was one of the last Netscapers, at least on Windows. You've made my day with this. Thanx! :-)

As for tables, I got better results with NS (it's faster). It may have errors, but IE has them as well (with <input> tags, for example). The problem with NS is that version 4.0 sucks. Use 4,51 as it has proved to be the most stable 4,xx (4,7x are also quite buggy).

Btw, for development, I use NS4,51 and NS6,1 (depending on machine I'm on) because it insists more on standards and has better JavaScript debugging then IE. But, I ALWAYS test final version on both NS4,5 and NS6,1, as well as IE5. If it's intended for wider audience, I test it on Opera as well.

If the information is more important than appereance, be sure to test it with lynx.

gushy

A good developer needs to devlop for as many possible configurations as possible. IE on win, NS 4.x on win, NS 6.x on win, NS4.x on nix, NS6.x on nix, IE on Mac, NS4.x on Mac, NS 6.x on mac, etc.

That's all I tend to test on, opera causes a to many hassles nad I tend to not bother unless I know a large proportion of the licent base of the site I'm working on will use it.

Anyway the solution to your problem is PHP and style sheets. Use php to see what browser/platform combination is being used and then load the appropriate style sheet.

-- Nick Gushlow.