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What assumptions do you make?

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 9:01 am
by nielsene
I've long been a proponent of the "design for the lowest common denominator" with regards to web technologies and try to be as standard compliant as I can, ie I'm currently targetting sites for XMHTL Strict.

For instance, I've never used JavaScript because I don't want to rely on it. I've found sites that use it when present and "degrade gracefully" in its absence, don't degrade niceley; the wonderful navigation falls completely apart, etc.

I really want to use CSS, it makes life so much easier, but a very large segment of my testing community is on Netscape 4.xx. (But that's changing at the end of the month!!!! :) ) As long as Netscape 4.xx was in use I had to use nested tables for layout as CSS width settings are completely broken.

I used to pride myself that all my sites were useable in IE, Netscape, and Lynx. The newest one with the nested table fake of CSS of course is completely unuseable in Lynx.

So I guess my questions for you are:
1. What browsers do you target?
2. What browser(s) do you develop on?
3. What client-side capabilities to you use?
4. What client-side capabilities do you need?


--------------------------------------
My answers:
1. Netscape 4 and higher, IE 3(I think) and higer, lynx
2. Netscape 4 (keeps me honest), but changing to Mozilla shortly
3. (X)HTML, subset of CSS
4. HTML

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 9:41 am
by twigletmac
I work for a local authority and we want to reach as many people as possible and since some of the areas around here are very deprived we don't want to exclude someone because they don't have the latest browser.

Currently we use a tabled layout but use CSS for anything that won't destroy the page in older browsers. We use very little Javascript and where there is Javascript there is a (working) non-JS version too. We're about to launch our first little bit of Flash but we will have a transcript of the movie as well as other means of accessing it available. We used Flash because it reduced the size of the movie (a completely pointless corporate video) to a tenth of its original size.

We test our site in:
  • Netscape 4, 6 and 7
  • IE 4, 5 and 6
  • Opera 5 and 6
  • Lynx
  • Mozilla
  • Various text to speech readers
It can be quite restrictive but I have my fun on the intranet site where I can CSS everything and try out new stuff.

Mac

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 12:30 pm
by llimllib
I designed my site using strictly CSS, because I'm doing it as a project for me, not for anyone else. The site I designed for my internship this summer combines CSS with HTML, but is much more heavy on the HTML.

Really, you just have to look at what you want to get accomplished, and design for the people who are going to look at your website.

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 12:44 pm
by ~J~R~R
I'm trying to use the standards where possible, but today's browsers differ much in the way they display your code. I test it first in IE6, then in NS6 en then Opera6. I'm working only with HTML/CSS (i'm waiting some time till i start with XHTML), so it will work with most browsers. My main targets are the 6th generation browsers. Almost the only thing i use JS for is to open a new window.

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 12:52 pm
by llimllib
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I've been learning Mozilla development, because I want to make a game (setback, a card game also called pitch). XUL is cool, I can't wait until the O'reilly book "Programming Mozilla" comes out. Moz 1.1 is awesomely powerful.