[WEB4LIB] Re: browser differences

[Jeremy Foster]

Web Standards are good, but not great.

They are starting designers down the road of non-browser based designs..but the problem is the browsers aren't there yet.

I have been looking at moving our own library website into more compliant code, so that it is more accessably friendly. But I have found that by doing so I will end up changing the look of the website for our main user base. Netscape 4.7 and less is still a major section of our user base. So it has become a trade off.. of getting the look and feel we want with our main user base and still trying to be accessable for disabled users.

Buy moving to Standards only, we end right back up in a browser war.. instead of Microsoft vs. Netscape ..it now becomes Old vs. New and you start seeing pages with tag lines "Site works best with Mozilla or Amaya..etc.."

As long as you have designers pushing the edges you will have sites that require a newer or different brand name browser.

And this is not all that bad... I consider myself a "Power user" I run WinXP with IE 6, Netscape 7 and Mozilla 1.1 and a high speed connection.
In my day job I design for lower end browsers because of the user base..but when I'm surfing the more flash or Javscript technology I can find the better. I admit that some sites use this technology unwisely, but a good designer can make the most of the technologies and take a static page to the next level of interactivity.

Case in point.. Kid's websites... Flash can add a lot to a kids website.. things that might annoy some older surfers, such as flash navigation buttons and simple animations make the site interesting to kids.

They want things that move and play sounds.. they need that reaction to what ever they might be doing or else they lose interest quickly.

In the end it comes down to your end-user base. Such as the college website.. If I was looking to take another web design course I would be more impressed by the use of Javascript and Flash on the website then a college that is just simply static pages.

I'm not saying that Web Standards aren't worth using, I'm just saying that everything has it's place. Flash can be used effectivly in the right situation, and Web Standards will one day be the only way to code.. but until your user base is 100% Standards compliant browsers, we have to design for our current user base. and 90% of them use either IE 5 -6 or Netscape 4.5 - 4.7 with yes belive it or not the Flash plug-in installed.


Jeremy Foster
HRL Webmaster
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agjf1 at nsh.library.ns.ca
Tel: (902)490-5670
http://www.halifax.library.ns.ca
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Alderney Gate Library
60 Alderney Drive
Dartmouth, NS, B2Y 4P8          
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