compliance issue

[otter]

ok kids.....its official!!....otter is signed up and beginning construction soon. I do want to ask all of you something first. In the past i pretty much only worried about being ie4+ and netscape3+ compliant when creating sites. Now i can't help but consider the resurgence of Macs in the online communities. Im wondering how many of you happen to be on a Mac now? And , if so, do any of you tend to add fonts to your systems?

I might as well forwarn your all too.....im fluent in 13 dialects of typo so i genneraly don't give much concern to my spelling or grammer....bear with me..=o]

[Chris]

I'm running Windows XP Professional, with Internet Explorer 6 right now.

To give you an idea of my system, I've never bothered installing any other fonts, or anything such as Commet Cursor since that is evil. I still have a swarm of stuff that I need to install since I formatted last night, including flash.

The majority of people browsing through sites have Windows 98SE and Internet Explorer 4 or 5 installed on their computers still.

[Steven]

I believe that when you create a site, you really should make it compliant with most every browser. Before I checked the stats on Insiderhosting the vast majority of them are using IE 6.0 or 4.0-5.5. I will attach an OS report

#: #reqs: #pages: OS
--: -------: ------: --
1: 338102: 316278: OS unknown
2: 1924924: 172336: Windows
: 713723: 82553: Windows XP
: 543869: 36574: Windows 2000
: 436738: 30287: Windows 98
: 122066: 11685: Windows ME
: 47942: 5493: Windows NT
: 28658: 2828: Unknown Windows
: 30723: 2656: Windows 95
: 953: 225: Windows 32-bit
: 221: 35: Windows CE
: 15: 0: Windows 3.1
: 16: 0: Windows 16-bit
3: 106067: 14192: Macintosh
: 106024: 14183: Macintosh PowerPC
: 17: 9: Unknown Macintosh
: 26: 0: Macintosh 68k
4: 4610: 4078: Known robots
5: 131133: 1066: Unix
: 130118: 984: Linux
: 938: 82: SunOS
: 22: 0: IRIX
: 48: 0: BSD
: 1: 0: OSF1
: 6: 0: AIX
6: 613: 24: WebTV
7: 4: 0: OS/2
8: 3: 0: RISC OS


Hopefully this will help you.

-Steven

[Ailish]

Originally posted by otter
Im wondering how many of you happen to be on a Mac now? And , if so, do any of you tend to add fonts to your systems?

I'm on a Mac, but that shouldn't matter. There are enough well defined standards out there that there's no excuse for coding something so that it's specific to a particular OS or browser family.

Fonts are a trickier issue. The first choice fonts for my site aren't loaded on many computers. That doesn't mean you need to avoid them, but you do need to specify alternatives (including the generic names that any browser should have mapped to local fonts) that will still work. I suspect most people don't install fonts, per se, but will often install software such as a word processor that installs additional fonts.

Ailish

[otter]

thank steven....the stats give me a good feel for whats out there. I have to say i am suprized at some of the numbers tho.....i would have not guessed that that high a percentage of people would have gone to windows xp. I personaly am running a windows 2000 pro/ debian linux system. i am also curious to why so many hits show unknown os's. Are they stealth or do there exsist that many rouge coders writing their own os?
Also, what is the time frame those stats represent?

[otter]

posted by ailish:
I'm on a Mac, but that shouldn't matter. There are enough well defined standards out there that there's no excuse for coding something so that it's specific to a particular OS or browser family.

the reason i ask ailish is cuz while im obviously indifferant in regards to my text, i tend to be anal when it comes to graphics and layouts.......there are some very cool methods and techniques out there that can enhance the anyones visit to a site...but unfortunatly they aren't supported by all browsers.
As far as the fonts are concerned, I equally like to use differant ones to accent my sites look and feel.....many times i can import server side fonts to a browser on a system where they are not installed....but not to everyone. This just means i want to put more thought into the planning of what im getting ready to do.
This is kina uncharacteristic of me ....lol

[Eric]

Hi Otter....Welcome :D

As far as being IE vs. Netscape compliant, I use to always view my pages in Netscape to verify things were working ok, then about 6 months ago...just stopped. The vast majority are using IE 5 or higher and after visiting other boards and discussing the issue at length I've come to the opinion that your never going to be able to be completely compliant between these two browsers.

Also, I thought netscape was out of the browser wars. About a year ago they shifted their business plan I thought...but then I heard about Netscape 7 coming out on their website so I'm totally confused.

Not sure if that helped any, but hope it did.

-Eric

[SmackDaddy]

Unfortunately, I am not concerned too much about other browsers so much.......I like the fact that with PHP and mySQL I can create a site with "frills" to satisfy 90% of the browsers.......I am not someone who feels I need to sacrifice "frills" for 100% compatability......whether that's wrong or right is each person's opinion, but the browser breakdown above is pretty much on par with what I have seen.....

I used to be a Netscape person, but Netscape has shot themselves in the foot one too many times recently......screw 'em!

My 2 cents....

[harmonic]

i just make sure everything is valid. that's all...