Web site and search engines

[raynerj1]

if a browser has been released to the public, you can bet your bippie that someone is still using it. Long ago I got the idea out of my head to only design for the latest and greatest browsers. The first time your clients rake you over the coals cause they lost a possible sale because of the fancy stuff in the site, you too will learn.

Keep it simple, Design for the lowest common demoninator. Anything else is hurting your clients.

[pauland]

Design for the lowest common denominator.

No way.

[Jimi King]

Keep it simple, Design for the lowest common demoninator. Anything else is hurting your clients.

Pretty much impossible I would have said. I just looked at the stats for one of my fairly busy sites for the last thirty days. From nearly 4000 visits they broke down like this:

1. Internet Explorer 72.14% (of which 77% were IE7 and 22% IE6)
2. Firefox 22.74% (65% were FF2, 30% FF3)
3. Safari 2.47%
4. Opera 1.31%
5. Mozilla 1.08%
6. Konqueror 0.10%
7. NetFront 0.05%
8. Netscape 0.05%
9. Camino 0.03%
10. Playstation 0.03%

I personally check my sites in IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera and that's where I draw the line.

[zaphodeist]

...I will go out and buy a book on HTML...

Best place is the original instead

[steve.ledger]

Hey John (neodeist).. Just curious why you often use tinyurl for your links when the original link is quite acceptable here?

[zaphodeist]

A habit I got into for emails, now not needed because I use Thunderbird which, as on TG, allows the use of a word to be a link. I'm just not good at kicking habits

[steve.ledger]

Fair enough - though (from memory), rich text (html) email editors have always allowed html refs to be applied as a link to a single word.

I'd just like to add my agreement to the suggestions that using the free resources on the web is the best way to learn basic html. I don't do much anymore, but what worked for me was to pick apart examples to see what broke and work out why.
There are some good books I'm sure, though the problem is you cannot copy'n'paste from a book...
It used to be fun - but now my attention is elswhere.

[BobInce]

the box model for example, where workarounds still rear their ugly head..

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about: that's an IE5 bug only, and even if you don't bother work around it for the last fraction of a percent of still-extant IE5 users, the layout is probably only going to go a wee bit wonky; it's not going to break your site's functionality.

(This is assuming you're making new sites in Standards Mode for IE users. But then why wouldn't you be?)

[Incidentally as an unrelated note w3schools.com aren't anything to do with 'the original' W3C organisation. Not that I'd advise trying to learn HTML from their raw specification documents, obviously!]

[zaphodeist]

...Incidentally as an unrelated note w3schools.com aren't anything to do with 'the original' W3C organisation...

Sorry to mislead, I thought they were Good introduction to html though I found

[raynerj1]

I have found that a good HTML dictionary works about the best for me. Once you learn what the tags do, then it is easy enough to just view the source and find out how one page or another is built. Unless you have an unkind author who lays his code out bad.

I try and make mine easy to read. Makes it easier to change it in 6 months when the client needs an edit.

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.

It all depends on the clientale. If they are younger and computer literate, then you can do fancier things. If your want your sites to be seen by the average computer user (who couldn't tell you what a browser is). Then you keep it simple. Ask you mum to find open a browser and you will loose them 9 out of 10 times.