Web site and search engines

[steve.ledger]

I have nothing against making a fancy site, if the clients wants it, I do it. I just have to explain to them it costs more (takes longer to make it fancy) and they are gonna have to answer questions from their customers why the can't see the fancy stuff with their version of mosaic.

You have a a singular sense of humor John

[covoxer]

Why? The last version of Mosaic in fact is IE6.

[handrawn]

not then in fact here?
http://vaxa.wvnet.edu/vmswww/vms_mosaic.html

[steve.ledger]

Why? The last version of Mosaic in fact is IE6.

Ok, whilst there is an element of truth hidden away there, that's not what John was saying now was it.
Besides, even if IE6 was a really the latest version of Mosiac (it's not, it's just based on bits of it) - then the 'fancy stuff' would be fine right ?

Here's the About IE6 Blurb for anyone curious:

Based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic(TM); was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Distributed under a licensing agreement with Spyglass, Inc.
Contains security software licensed from RSA Data Security Inc.
Portions of this software are based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.
Multimedia software components, including Indeo(R); video, Indeo(R) audio, and Web Design Effects are provided by Intel Corp.
Unix version contains software licensed from Mainsoft Corporation. Copyright (C) 1998-1999 Mainsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Mainsoft is a trademark of Mainsoft Corporation.
Warning: This computer program is protected by copyright law and international treaties. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this program, or any portion of it, may result in severe civil and criminal penalties, and will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible under the law.

[raynerj1]

The reason MS controls 90+% of the browsers is that 70+% of the folks using it couldn't find the answer the following question.

Please select your browser?

a. Intenet Explorer
b. Netscape Navigator
c. Microsoft XP
d. Microsoft windows 3.01

You can't upgrade what you don't know. I doubt there are many computers out there with the original version of mosiac on them because it didn't come stock. I would be willing to bet that half the old computers still around have the original version of a browser. Those are the demographics of customers visiting most web sites.

[steve.ledger]

The reason MS controls 90+% of the browsers is that 70+% of the folks using it couldn't find the answer the following question.

Please select your browser?

This is getting a tad OT me thinks.

90%+ seems a bit generous nowdays. Current usage is cited as from Net Applications:

Internet Explorer (73.81%)
Mozilla Firefox (18.43%)
Safari (6.14%)
Opera (0.71%)
Netscape (0.62%)
Other (0.29%)

or from W3Counter;

Internet Explorer (61.43%)
Mozilla Firefox (29.02%)
Safari (2.02%)
Opera (1.13%)2
Other (6.4%)

They are huge differences, so who really knows the real figures?

None the less in my work most standard users have no idea what a 'browser' is. They simply call it the 'Internet' as that's what the blue 'picture' (what's an icon??) on the desktop says.

If I were to ask them to open their web 'browser' and they have no idea what I mean, tell them to open the 'internet' and they are fine.

I also find that most standard users actually do update IE because they always say 'yes' to prompts that tell them they need to install new Windows updates. More and more XP based PC's are coming in to me which now have IE7 as the default web browser ( "because Microsoft told me I needed to update so I pushed yes". )

You can only do so much when creating a site, if it works equally in the three top browsers, then leave it at that. You can't write for last century browsers and keep your clients business site looking modern & up-to-the-minute at the same time.. well I couldn't/wouldn't.