I'm just beginning to learn CSS and I was curious about something. I see one of the main problems with CSS is that it is not displayed the same across browsers of different versions. I see many sites do workarounds for browsers like Netscape 4. Wasn't that released like 10 years ago? I guess what I'm stressing out about is how much extra will I have to learn in order for some guy who can't take the time to upgrade his free piece of software? Should I code with only the latest 2 versions of each browser in mind? I looked at my logs, and here is what my visitors are using: Versions Grabber Hits Percent MSIE 705654 81.1 % Msie 7.0 No 333734 38.3 % Msie 6.1 No 4 0 % Msie 6.0 No 362332 41.6 % Msie 5.5 No 3127 0.3 % Msie 5.23 No 991 0.1 % Msie 5.22 No 28 0 % Msie 5.21 No 32 0 % Msie 5.17 No 59 0 % Msie 5.14 No 395 0 % Msie 5.13 No 27 0 % Msie 5.12 No 96 0 % Msie 5.01 No 335 0 % Msie 5.0 No 1090 0.1 % Msie 4.01 No 3299 0.3 % Msie 3.02 No 11 0 % Msie 2.0 No 94 0 % FIREFOX 111169 12.7 % Firefox 2.0.0.7 No 18290 2.1 % Firefox 2.0.0.6 No 67830 7.7 % Firefox 2.0.0.5 No 465 0 % Firefox 2.0.0.4 No 11429 1.3 % Firefox 2.0.0.3 No 189 0 % Firefox 2.0.0.2 No 149 0 % Firefox 2.0.0.1 No 629 0 % Firefox 2.0 No 823 0 % Firefox 1.6 No 19 0 % Firefox 1.5.0.9 No 23 0 % Firefox 1.5.0.8 No 29 0 % Firefox 1.5.0.7 No 304 0 % Firefox 1.5.0.6 No 27 0 % Firefox 1.5.0.5 No 1 0 % Firefox 1.5.0.4 No 114 0 % Firefox 1.5.0.31 No 14 0 % Firefox 1.5.0.3 No 18 0 % Firefox 1.5.0.2 No 2538 0.2 % Firefox 1.5.0.12 No 2078 0.2 % Firefox 1.5.0.11 No 1 0 % Firefox 1.5.0.1 No 174 0 % Firefox 1.5 No 190 0 % Firefox 1.0.7 No 718 0 % Firefox 1.0.6 No 3334 0.3 % Firefox 1.0.4 No 788 0 % Firefox 1.0.2 No 127 0 % Firefox 1.0.1 No 93 0 % Firefox 1.0 No 194 0 % Firefox 0.9.6 No 72 0 % Firefox 0.9.2 No 52 0 % Firefox 0.9.1 No 39 0 % Firefox 0.9 No 95 0 % Firefox 0.8.0 No 36 0 % Firefox 0.8 No 84 0 % Firefox 0.5.6 No 12 0 % Firefox 0.10.1 No 94 0 % Firefox 0.10 No 97 0 % NETSCAPE 4213 0.4 % Netscape 8.1.3 No 52 0 % Netscape 8.1.2 No 34 0 % Netscape 8.0.1 No 76 0 % Netscape 8.0 No 55 0 % Netscape 7.2 No 2584 0.2 % Netscape 7.1 No 129 0 % Netscape 7.02 No 90 0 % Netscape 7.0 No 615 0 % Netscape 6.2.1 No 63 0 % Netscape 5.0 No 84 0 % Netscape 4.8 No 27 0 % Netscape 4.79 No 79 0 % Netscape 4.77 No 19 0 % Netscape 4.76 No 32 0 % Netscape 4.61 No 26 0 % Netscape 4.5 No 39 0 % Netscape 4.08 No 1 0 % Netscape 4.06 No 25 0 % Netscape 4.05 No 2 0 % Netscape 4.0 No 51 0 % Netscape 3.0 No 44 0 % Netscape 2.02 No 10 0 % Netscape 0.91 No 44 0 % Netscape 0.6 No 32 0 % Others 48942 5.6 % Safari No 13962 1.6 % Unknown ? 13896 1.5 % Opera No 11904 1.3 % Mozilla No 4120 0.4 % Wget Yes 3368 0.3 % Camino No 536 0 % NewsGator (RSS Reader) No 290 0 % K-Meleon No 207 0 % Firebird (Old Firefox) No 152 0 % Galeon No 112 0 % Phoenix No 109 0 % Acrobat Webcapture Yes 78 0 % Epiphany No 50 0 % Links No 42 0 % Lynx No 33 0 % NetPositive No 26 0 % OmniWeb No 20 0 % Konqueror No 12 0 % OSSProxy No 10 0 % Sony/Ericsson Browser (PDA/Phone browser) No 5 0 % I-Mode phone (PDA/Phone browser) No 4 0 % LibWWW No 3 0 % HTTP user-agent for POE (portable networking framework for Perl) No 2 0 % Curl Yes 1 0 % I'm wondering if I should design with the top 5 and simply include a little bullet at the bottom saying "made for browsers above version X.XX" Opinions?
I guess what you have to ask yourself, is how much time are you willing to spend making your site compatible for the 0.1% of users who use an ancient browser version? If you have like 100 visitors per month whose browser is not compatible with your site, you might want to do something... ~Adam
You have to draw the line somewhere to be practical and profitable. Basically this means IE 6, IE 7, and Firefox. You might want to check Safari and FF on the Mac, too. If you get these with validated code just about all the others will fall in line.
I test against Opera 9, Firefox 1.5 and 2.0, IE 6 & 7, Safari and DEMAND they be functional in all of those. If you can write hack free code that works in Opera 9, IE 7, Safari and Firefox, then use one or two minor hacks/scripts to bring IE6 up to snuff - you should be fine moving forwards and have covered >99% of your visitors. Anyone who cannot run IE6 or better... well, needs to get into THIS millenium. I occasionally LOOK at IE 5.x, usually shrug my shoulders and say 'close enough'. Anything before that? **** it.