Recent comments on the last post have prompted me to look again at this Netscape 4 issue. It turns out that there are still some people around who are using Netscape version 4, in spite of the fact that it was released in 1997 (5 years ago!). Netscape is currently freely available version 7.
I suspect that many web designers don’t have a copy of Netscape version 4 knocking around. I suggest that all web designers dust off any old pentiums or PowerPCs and install a copy of the old browsers.
What’s that? You lost the old browser software installers?
Read on ::::::::::::
furthermore...
Evolt.org have archived all of the old browsers (more than you need, I suspect), so misplacing those old cover magazine CDs is no excuse!
How far back are you prepared to support on your web site? Don't bother with anything earlier than Netscape 4, though because you'll find NO support for CSS. This may be academic, because really the question should be - 'What browsers can I detect my readers are using?'
You may look at W3Schools.com and check with the latest statistics; Netscape 4 = 2%. You could decide to just not bother!
If you search Google for 'detect browser' you'll find plenty of free javascript code to detect which browser and version that your viewers are using. Question is what do you do when you KNOW they are coming in on Netscape 4? Do you: politely tell them that this browser is not supported? or do you provide an alternative design (rather a lot of work!)
We should be grateful to Jeffrey Zeldman for his 'A List Apart' site, because here you find many answers to these thorny problems. In particular take a look at To hell with Bad browsers .
I have decided to take my Netscape 4 users to WebStandards.org where a full explanation is available.
I wasn't prepared to go this far though:
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www.netscape.com still distributes 4.x browsers from their Browser central pages.
Personally, I refuse to put extra effort in to support NS4. If my code degrades nicely, fine, but why should anyone be asked to write old bugs into their new code to support a maximum of 1% of the browser market, Brookes excepted.
I always laughed when I saw the Computer Services Frequently Asked Questions: Why can’t we upgrade from Netscape 4? A. because there’s no demand.
If it was Frequently asked enough to make the FAQ doesn’t that indicate demand!
I still have one client that use Netscape 4.x, so for her site I have to be careful. But this is 2003… and the number of persons using it is about .5%. At least on my sites.
I do provide a pda version instead, since those numbers will tend to get larger.
Posted on 01/16 at 04:19 PM
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I have the version: Netscape Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3b) Gecko/20030131.
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Bizzare! I didn’t think Netscape 5 was ever released! So where did that come from? The script I’m using doesn’t check for it, but I can change it.
Posted on 02/18 at 03:38 PM
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It doesn’t, buzarrely, refer to a ‘version’ number as much as to a ‘generation’ number. Mozilla 5 is actually the HTTP header sent out by a fifth generation Mozilla based browser - Netscape 6 was the one to do this.
Posted on 02/18 at 03:53 PM
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I’m planning to use another method to detect Netscape 4,because the javascript that I use now is being fooled!
Posted on 02/21 at 10:06 PM
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You’re a fool if you use browser sniffing. I can change my user agent string to be anything I want. You always screw people that are using lesser known browsers or brand spanking new ones you haven’t heard of yet (or even brand spanking new versions of browsers you *have* heard of).
Just ask the browser what it can handle. It will use what it can handle and ignore the rest.
