I'd have to agree with Cori. One "easy" solution if have the home page verify the visiting browser configuration and then have it direct the visitor to a version of the site that is tailored to that browser. OK, so in reality that is a mountain of work... then I think what needs to be done is rid the site of the fancy DHTML and java scripts that are platform dependent (that's only my opinion... don't go jumping all over me )

Thank you for you idea, and please note that it is in the works.

Should be done soon, and not as in 'next week' kind of soon either.

Well, that was quick! Thanks, much easier now. Oh yeah, I can login with lynx, unable to post tho. Heh heh... maybe better that way. -Tabo

After reading this thread I was curious so I checked my log files for ClimbNYC.com. It seems that Netscape version 4 is the third most popular browser behind IE5 & IE6 and far ahead of any of the newer versions of Netscape. The total Netscape usage is 9%. Just about the same as for the Mac users. So the question is do you design for the 90% or the 9% (sadly the other 1% is easy to forget about) I don't have an answer for that one...


Here are the results for the past few months. Each visitor is only counted once by WebTrends:

Browser & Version Visitors %
1. Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x - 10,993 - 56.99%

2. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x - 5,872 - 30.44%

3. Netscape 4.x - 1,319 - 6.84%

4. Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x - 605 - 3.14%

5. Netscape 6.x - 252 - 1.31%

6. Netscape 5.x - 95 - 0.49%

7. Other Netscape Compatible - 74 - 0.38%

8. Opera 4.x - 59 - 0.31%

9. Opera 6.x - 7 - 0.04%

10. Microsoft Internet Explorer - 7 - 0.04%

11. Opera - 2 - 0.01%

12. UPG1 UP - 2 - 0.01%

13. SpaceBison - 1 - 0.01%

14. Opera 5.x - 1 - 0.01%

PS- ClimbNYC.com will not be exactly the same as gunks.com in make up but it seems to be close to the stats for the rest of the web.

No Mozilla?

If you design for the 1%, (long live LYNX!), then it works for the other 99%.

If you design for the 90% IE users, you piss off the extremely vocal Linux (and BSD!) users running Mozilla. And some of the Mac crowd because they love to complain too. Then the Netscape users will speak up because they might as well at that point.

So it depends on how flame-resistant you are, if you're willing to alienate the zealots by telling them to take their non-conforming OSes elsewhere, and if you're willing to lose that diversity.

My guess is that that would fall under #7

And definitely #6. Webtrends doesn't know about Mozilla so they've invented a nonexistent netscape version

I know diddly about this, but I would guess that for users of products classified from option #5 and below, they are statistically SOL.

I can't imagine it is economically viable/feasible for anybody to expend time and resources towards something that affects 1% or less of the user population.

While Todd has a good point (why have the masses suffer for the sake of a select few) I would think this is the wrong answer. It looks like e2MET's profile shows him as a web designer first (and not a climber at all?). If you are a student looking to get into web design these are the problems you can not look away from in the real world. One day your boss will be at a friends house and have them call up his companies site for a little bragging rights and the computer will be running AOL with some old version of Mosaic and you'll be looking at a pink slip the following Monday... OK, so it's a little far fetched... personally I like solving problems and not sweeping them under the rug