It is not to be believed. It is nerve-wracking. I’ve put my diploma thesis online two years ago – since then the percentage of people visiting my site with the dreaded Netscape Navigator 4.x versions has not really declined. (Navigator 4.x dreaded? Why? Check these links if you want to know more: for people who know html, for Germans who are interested.)
In the beginning the percentage of Navigator 4.x users was hovering about four to eight percent. These days it may still reach 3 percent. This is just so utterly frustrating since I don’t want to introduce the more interesting features offered by CSS if they break the browsing experience for a significant amount of visitors; especially if those visitors are marginalized because of their hardware/software combination anyway. Not everybody has access even to a Pentium II 300 Mhz upward machine on which Windows 98 SE and Internet Explorer 5.x is installed. However, seeing the technological conservatism of many academic internet users, it seems to be likely that many people are browsing with Navigator 4.x versions because that is the browser which introduced them to the internet, and they don’t want to change the way they access the net. *sighs* Please spread modern browser evangelism and help people install browser that are more modern that Netscape Navigator/Communicator 4.x or Internet Explorer 4.x! Of course, I do recommend the browser developed by the open source community such as the Mozilla family.
You are completely right. The old beast should rest in peace. But the small percentage of users who still use NS4 might be partly the same who have been told, that IE is insecure and evil. Since there was no major (usable) NS update through the years 98-02, they had no real choice.>
Uhm – I always forget to put my name – you don’t want to make it mandatory?>
Uhm – I always forget to put my name – you don’t want to make it mandatory?>
Sorry for spamming your blog – how about doing some browser sniffing and serving different style sheets to different types of browsers?>
Oh, I guess it is ok not to make the name field mandatory. I don’t want to bother people with requests telling them (in red fonts) that they have to fill out this and that required field. If this generates additional comments: even better ;-)
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Probably you know this already: A good primer on browser detection is http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2002/browser-detection>
One last comment: The renaming issue is not that serious, insofar as both, Firefox and Camino, are 0.x products, and considered by mozilla.org technology previews and not end user products.>