Re: PCMag ranks the browsers and says IE6 is the best...

On Monday, September 30, 2002, 9:16:38 AM, Isofarro wrote:
> > And just a quick question: why on earth are you on this list when you
> > use NS4?
> 
> I find this a rather odd question. Isn't the whole point of adopting
> standards based approach to web design that of getting away from
> browser-dependant authoring? Surely the choice of browser is inconsequential
> since standards compliant websites are more accessible to more browsers
> anyway. Therein lies the value of adopting standards-based approaches.

Browser-dependant authoring, yes, but that's only possible if the
browsers support the standards in the first place. NS4 does not. NS4
screws many of them - especially CSS - very much up.

If authors didn't use work-arounds (media="all", @import, comment
hacks) for NS4, most pages that use CSS extensively will either render
unreadable at best and totally crash the browser at worst.

NS4 has been - and continues to be - one of the major problems in
getting people to use standards. Most NS4 users still unfortunately
expect to load pages, and have them look nice.

And yes, yes, you can make a validating page that looks OK-ish in NS4.
Either making a hacked-together CSS file or using transitional HTML
and tables - but this isn't ideal by any means.

The faster NS4 users are obliterated the faster standards will be
accepted and used.

-- 
Tom Gilder
http://tom.me.uk/

Received on Monday, 30 September 2002 06:00:10 UTC