A lot of people are up in arms in regards to the Web Standards Project‘s recent declaration, To Hell with Bad Browsers. I can see both sides of the argument. It’s important to note that many people use an old version of a browser for a reason; oftentimes it’s due to a lack of computing horsepower, and moreoften it’s due to department- or company-wide deployment. The horsepower argument is somewhat of a wash, though, because Opera can run on even a lowly 386 (and now there’s a Mac version on the way, huzzah!)
I’m working on transitioning a work site to use more CSS. It won’t be complete, not just yet, but it’s getting there. And every single time I made any change to the CSS, Netscape 4.75 would bungle it. Not just somewhat, but immensely. Take my dilemma. I’ve got an image, a small one, that I want shifted left and down a few pixels. Thus, I can use the relative position attribute of a stylesheet to move it, right? Like so.
.moverandshaker {position: relative; top: 3px; left: 3px}
Very easy. I used this five times on a page. What did Netscape 4.75 do? It was actually random. Sometimes it would line up some of the images next to each other, sometimes it wouldn’t; the only constant was that Netscape would screw things up, royally. What to do?
WaSP’s idea are solid, and the arguments are pretty good – the only downside is that so many people are using a version four browser, it’s crazy. There needs to be a balance between using the new technologies (which are standards and are supported in the current browsers), and dealing with the people who can’t or won’t upgrade. Any advice? -pm
Posted in Technology
