RE: Something I've never seen done on a web page before ! -- WEB400

> From: Jim Langston
>
> Joe Pluta, you are going off on a tangent.  The reason I, and
> many others, use Netscape 4.77, 4.79, whatever, is because our
> customers do and we want to support our customers.

I was just trying to find out why customers might still be using Netscape
4.x.  There really isn't much reason to do so, other than supporting OTHER
users who use it.  If everyone stopped using it, we wouldn't have to worry
about it.


> In web sales, if something doesn't work the first time, the
> customer is either not going to buy and go to another store, or
> click on the contacts and say your sites all screwed up, go fix it.

The IHT site works fine, even with 4.x.  But it's not dumbed down to 4.x
either.  Very intelligent design.


> Okay, fine, this doesn't apply to your particular website, but
> the question wasn't why YOU use 4.77 but why Jeff used 4.77 (and
> I answered as applied to my and my business).

I asked why he ran it as a browser, not why he might support it on his
website.  Different question.  You change the subject to website design.
Thus the tangent.


> Oh, and incidentally, Linux runs Netscape, so yes, our site runs
> under Linux.

I didn't say Linux, I said Lynx.  Lynx is probably the most popular
text-only browser.  It runs on VMS and non-graphical Unix systems.  You're
losing out on that market with your elitist approach <smile>.


> And yes, we tried to do some correlation between what people with
> what browsers bought what, and there wasn't a significant
> difference to skew the figures after we got the rough estimates
> to narrow it down more, so we consider if x% of visitors use Y
> web browser, they account for X% of the sales.

This is an interesting premise, and one that invites inaccuracy.  I'm
surprised you use it since it's really no harder to calculate revenue
statistics than usage statistics.  But you say they're the same.  So, you've
made your business decision.


> And, it is more than revenue that matters.  It is professionalism
> and trust.  A customer goes to my web site and sees a broken
> link, a broken tag, something that doesn't work, there goes my
> reputation.

What doesn't work on IHT?  IHT made a very intelligent (and difficult to
implement) decision to allow both advanced features for newer browsers and
yet have a fallback for older browsers.  Much more user friendly than the
decision to dumb down the entire user interface, in my opinion.


> Not only won't they buy, but they'll tell their
> friends that the company is garbage, look how shoddy their web
> page looks.  First impressions and all, you know.

One more time, Jim: IHT doesn't look shoddy, even in Netscape 4.  It just
doesn't have all the features.  I got a GREAT first impression with the IHT
website.  So has everybody I've told about the site.  Even Opera works to a
point.  The fact that they haven't dumbed down their interface to an out of
date standard doesn't seem to hurt them.  Your decision to code to the
lowest common denominator is actually the EASY way out.  The IHT technology
is much harder to implement.

But again, I was just asking why anybody is still using 4.x who isn't
supporting other users.  It wasn't meant to be an attack on your design
decisions, even if I don't agree with them.  You have a right to design your
website however you want.

Joe