Blocking down level browsers- what is the risk?

[S. Justin Gengo]

Charlie,

This of course depends on your user base. You may have users who have older
computers and thus older browsers. But if your user base is typical of the
overall market then you're pretty safe:

Here's a link to fairly up to date statistics:
http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox26.html



--
Sincerely,

S. Justin Gengo, MCP
Web Developer / Programmer

www.aboutfortunate.com

"Out of chaos comes order."
Nietzsche

 

[Andrew Banks]

That's an appaling route to go down.

Is this a commercial site? If so can you justify turning away possibly 5-10%
of your customers because you can't or won't develop the website properly?

 

[Charlie@CBFC]

Hi:

I'm using a lot of JavaScript and HTML 4.0. Things seem to work well in
Netscape 7.0 and IE 5.5\6, but not Netscape 4\6 and not sure of IE 5.0.

My site blocks downlevel browsers and redirects users to page to upgrade
browsers. My question is- how much of market am I potentially losing by
doing this?

Thanks,
Charlie

 

[John Saunders]

That's an appaling route to go down.

What appalls you may not appall everyone.

Is this a commercial site? If so can you justify turning away possibly 5-10%
of your customers because you can't or won't develop the website properly?

He has to answer for himself, of course, but can you justify the time
required to develop your site to accommodate that 5-10%? If so, can you
share your justification with us?

 

[Alex Papadimoulis]

Charlie,

Another resource for you that I use a lot:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Also includes os stats.

- Alex Papadimoulis

 

[Marina]

Not to mention that certain things simply cannot be coded to accomodate old
browsers, etc. It would be sad to have to sacrifice
functionality/performance and not allow most of the user base to have a more
pleasant experience, for the sake of a few.

 

[Andrew Banks]

He has to answer for himself, of course, but can you justify the time

required to develop your site to accommodate that 5-10%? If so, can you
share your justification with us?

It's a well know fact that 80% of a companies business comes from 10% of its
customers (for the UK anyway)

So at the worst he could be eliminating 80% of his clients business from the
site should they be the 10% who don't use IE browsers.

I know this is an extreme but if you were developing for a client, blocking
anyone from viewing the site because you can't be arsed to code your HTML
correctly is a risky route. If you're gonna do it, at least provde a solid
business case for doing so. It's not a developer place to decide who should
have access to someones business - that's a business decision.

 

[S. Justin Gengo]

The real fact to consider is are his users willing to upgrade to a browser
that is compatible. We all think about having to make our code compatible
with all browsers. We all know that just isn't possible in the amount of
time a developer is usually given to create a solution.

So, the best we can do is make our solutions as compatible as possible.
Then, if we give our users an easy link to follow to upgrade their browsers,
how bad is it to say, "If you want to use all of the functionality built
into this site please use one of the following browsers: . . ."

Since there are plenty of browsers we can code for that have up-level
functionality, and since every single one of them is free, what is the
problem?

I've never had a user who wasn't willing to upgrade if they wanted something
from one of our sites that required the upgrade to function properly. They
may have had a problem if the browser wasn't free or if we didn't offer at
least three different types of browser that we were compatible with. But
we'll NEVER try to code for every browser out there. While it may be
possible to, our company just isn't willing to spend the kind of money and
time that would take.

--
Sincerely,

S. Justin Gengo, MCP
Web Developer / Programmer

www.aboutfortunate.com

"Out of chaos comes order."
Nietzsche