[WEB4LIB] RE: Draft home page not usable on my IE 6

[rich at richardwiggins.com]

The question isn't whether the beta browser is popular.  We know that some version of IE 6 will eventually be the majority browser.  The question is "how soon?" and "how close is the beta to the final product?"

Microsoft will be pushing IE 6 heavily with Office XP  and Windows XP (for good or for ill with its own set of issues worth an entirely different thread).  

If I were launching a new Web look in June 2001 I'd sure want to know if the content works under IE6.  I wouldn't complain that some folks tried to help out by testing under that browser.   (But I'd also want to know about WebTV, Opera, AOL-IE, etc.)

If it's got serious HTML errors I'd fix those first.

How many folks use online services for site testing?  NetMechanic has had an HTML verifier for years now.  Now they have a tool called BrowserPhoto that takes a snapshot of a page under each of 14 browser variants.  (Not yet IE6).   Anyone ever try it?

http://netmechanic.com/browser-index.htm

/rich

On Wed, 20 June 2001, Steve Cramer wrote:

> 
> It certainly doesn't hurt to test pages using IE6. But are betas 
> really that popular? For example, according to my library's web site 
> stats for May 2001, NN3 and WebTV got more page visits (by factors of 5 
> and 2) than IE6. Know your users!
> 
> (But use of IE6 is rising. In April 2001, IE6 was also under IE3.)
> 
> --Steve
> 

_____________________________________________________

Richard Wiggins
Consulting, Writing, and Lecturing on Internet Topics
rich at richardwiggins.com  http://richardwiggins.com