[WEB4LIB] Re: 99.9% of web sites obsolete?

[Andrew I. Mutch]

Karen,

The audience of the site is important. But it also should be noted that
coding to standards and supporting older browsers don't have to be
mutually exclusive. As Zeldman noted, his problem is those who insist on
"backward compatibility" when that terms really means:

"...using non-standard, proprietary (or deprecated) markup and code
to ensure that every visitor has the same experience, whether they're
sporting Netscape Navigator 1.0 or IE6."

There's no reason that you can't have a site whose markup supports
browsers all the way back to Netscape 2. However, the compromise is that
you won't be able to rely on CSS or other current methods of display to
accomplish that task. But as Zeldman noted, you have to decide how much
longer you are going to let the tail wag the dog is you want a web page
that looks more interesting that a basic text file.

Andrew Mutch
Library Systems Technician
Waterford Township Public Library
Waterford, MI



On Thu, 12 Sep 2002, Karen Harker wrote:

> To get back to the subject of the email, I think what should be taken
> into consideration is the audience of the site you are designing. If
> your audience is set on using v2-3 of Netscape, then you should probably
> code for that. Where the threshold lies is subjective...5%, 15%, 25%? 
> As in most of life, balance is the key. Bandwidth of HTML is not as
> imperative a concern as bandwidth of images or audio files. But we
> should realize that standards are very, very difficult to create and
> enforce. After 100 years of making cars, we still have few
> interchangeable parts.  
> 
> 
> 
> Karen R. Harker, MLS
> UT Southwestern Medical Library
> 5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
> Dallas, TX  75390-9049
> 214-648-1698
> http://www.swmed.edu/library/