Re: info center search. III.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lou Forlini" <lforlini@sspi-software.com>
> >Less than 1/2 of 1% of my customers use Netscape 6.

Probably because when NS 6 came iout it was so buggy no one could use it.

We hung on to NS 4.75 for a long time then gave up ans switched to IE.

>   Why would I invest time and money in a browser that an
> >insignificant number of people use.  I should support Opera also right?
I
> >have yet to see Opera show up in my stats.  The techies that use Opera
> >don't seem to visit commercial sites or have more than one browser
> >installed and know the limitations.


Hey I'm going to make a browser called Figaro. And another one
called Amadeus.  ANd another one called NightWind.

>   Talk about self-fulfilling prophesy.  Maybe those browsers don't
> show up in your logs because your website doesn't work?  What you're
> not getting is that you don't have to do *anything* to "support"
> NetScape 6 or Opera, just write clean HTML.

All these other browser have to do is make sure they support the IE version
of things.

Then there is no problem.

>  Just for grins, here's
> what showed up on my site last week (excluding bots and crawlers):
>
> MSIE 65%
> Netscape 32%

This number is typically 4% at a normal web site, with the vast majority of
those being NS 4.

> Opera 2%
> iCab <1%
> WebTV <1%

>    Who knows, that WebTV guy just might have ordered something.
> Didn't cost me anything extra to let him use the site.

So you are going to put Turksih versions of your web pages?

> >In fact Lou, your perspective is really the problem.  If we as web
> >developers band together and say firmly:  WE DO NOT SUPPORT NS6 -- It
will
> >(as it is doing) go away!
>
>     Why on earth would anyone want to do something like that?

Because the differences in style sheets, xml support, jscript are extremely
nontrivial.

Using NS and Opera and so forth is a personal decsion on the part of the
consumer.
If they do this for commercial or religious reasons, it is still no reason
for the web site
developer to shift the costs onto the other 95% of the consumers. The
consumer is
paying for the costs of the business whose products he or she consumes.

> >I'm no fan of microsoft, but the browser wars
> >are over, MS won!  Its that simple.
>
> Netscape could have said the exact same thing a few years ago,
> what did they have, around a 90% share?  Why would IE be invulnerable
> to changing market conditions?  Do you not see that the user base is
> becoming more diverse, with all of the new devices?  What are you
> going to say the first time your CEO asks you why he can't use his
> Palm to access his own website?

That there will have to be a Palm version of the site, makeing a site that
presents
the same pages to Palms is dumb. Do you want us to spend the extra money
to have a Palm version of the site? Is there a valid business reason for
this?

> >There are still a million or so
> >Netscape 4.7 users out there so we need to support THEM in public
> >websites.

We support them, but tell them they will not have the full experience or
features if they use NS.

> >My Intranet and internal sites are MS only!  In fact heaven help the
> >corporate user that I find using NS browsers!
>
>     Heaven help the corporate IT person who doesn't see the
> handwriting on the wall.  The ones who have their heads out of the
> sand are starting to heed what the security experts are telling them,
> turn off Javascript, ActiveX, and in some cases even cookies.

Then turn off doing anything useful. Without cookies there is no way to
maintain state except
by ip address (insecure) or url encoding (even more insecure.)

> Continuing to use IE with all of those features left on is fast
> becoming to be seen as derelict.

Well, activex is pretty much out.

>  And as Booth mentioned, the
> Microsoft tax is coming.  Are you so sure that your CEO will like
> your excuses for locking them into MS when he starts reading about it
> in the WSJ?  You're betting your career on it, and possibly even your
> entire company.
>
>     Regards,
>
>     - Lou Forlini
>       Software Engineer
>       System Support Products, Inc.

Well, now that IBm has co-opted Linux, what's left?

Brad Jensen