IE vs. NS (philosophy question)

Stinger51

I read the other day that IE now has 97+ percent of the browser market. NS and Opera control the rest. The browser wars are over, and the victor is . . . surprise!

Question is, why bother to code for NS anymore, esp. since they do such anti-IE things and are a buggy browser to being with? I am no fan of Microsquish. But I do like the idea of a more homogeneous market out there.

A megapenny for your thoughts, please.

nashirak

I would check that information out. That 97% sound really high. Doing a quick search on google reveals other surveys with IE vs Netscape. Netscape is about 15% to IE's like 65-70%. (The rest of them use Lynx like me.. he he he). Anyway your question is more of a client side ethical question than a PHP.

IE is in the lead by far right now (man you would think this browser gets shipped with an operating system or something to be this popular :-J ), however would you really like to leave out a potential 20% of your customers? To your comment about netscape doing "anti-IE" things try the reverse of that. Netscape was the first to release a browser before IE. Netscape came up with Javascript, then IE (surprise surprise) came out with a language called JScript. Which although similar had some differences, therefore whenever you right Javascript/JScript, you have to make sure it works in both.

Netscape has it problems, but they are getting better. I personally use Galeon (Mozilla engine) and it runs fine on almost all sites.

So this is all to say, for right now, until browser ppl adhear to some hard standards (W3C is a start) I at least will design site to support both IE and Netscape engines.

My 2 1/2 cents.

Phpdiot

Question is, why bother to code for NS anymore, esp. since they do such anti-IE things and are a buggy browser to being with? I am no fan of Microsquish. But I do like the idea of a more homogeneous market out there.

Agree but not so agree. :rolleyes: Who knows what will happen the next day?

Let your site control the browser while not let browser control your site.

the_Igel

As for me, I think the point is to keep site usable with any browser (Lynx too 🙂) and then one may add extra features that aren't supported with some of the browsers. But as I dislike all this move-drag-and-stir stuff, it's not great problem for me.

I never worried much about coding good for NS4, though. Hope it will disappear at last, and until then I will keep text readable for it and no more.
The rest of the browsers - IE, Geckos and Opera - are mostly compliant with w3c, so I rely on the standarts. Yes, there are problems (e.g. box model in MSIE/Win), but not that great. Biggest problem is no dynamics in Opera, but it's going to change soon as O7 being released.

alecodonnell

You can identify the browser making a request of your site. AARO this:

(i) you can serve pages to suit.

(ii) you can develop according to the readership of your site

Private companies are going to do (a) what's cheapest and (b) what's going to suit their clients.

Public bodies CANNOT be seen to set a commercial preference, so if anyone's misfortunate enough to work for the government, it's 100% cross-compatibility, or 'get your coat' time...

Frag

Netscape is garbage. Use Mozilla instead. Anything that Netscape has Mozilla had first. (As Netscape uses Mozilla as it's base) The only difference is Netscape is poluted with AOL garbage. (AOL popups, auto install of AIM, removal of Mozilla's popup killer, etc)

www.mozilla.org

Personal I use Opera (I like the tabbed broswing better than Mozilla's tabbed browsing). If something doesn't render correctly in Opera I use Mozilla (or IE if on windows).

As for Lynx. only if I'm downloading on a server (as servers wth GUI's are foolish IMHO)

jnuneznyc

From a javascript developer's point of view I think that NS 4 should finally die! I would love to just code for Mozilla Engines and IE6+ but the fact is the NS4 is a big part of my client's customers.

dannys

I think developers should stop developing for V4 browsers - they didn't support advanced CSS, loads of dubious browser specific tags, differing table support, wierd javascript support.

Now that every platform has a good V5 class browser (I'm counting Moz and IE6 as V5 for convenience) - we really should (IMO) concentrate on making sure sites work in those browsers first. I'm personally a big fan tabless CSS only layouts - with a bit of tweaking they can be made to look almost identical in IE, Moz and Opera.

http://newsite.kyboshed.com/ - a 100% table free, XHTML complient, crossbrowser safe (last time I checked) design.