CSS and Older Browsers

[themacnut]

I'm thinking seriously about updating my personal site http://www.macnuthome.com, a table-based layout, to exclusively CSS. But I'm wondering about how it will look in older browsers, 4.0 and under. Do any of you worry about that anymore? Do you keep track of the browsers used by visitors to your sites, and if so, approximately how many of them are using 4.0 and under browsers?

Thanks in advance for your replies-and any design suggestions for my site are also welcome.

 

[mr. k]

The defacto method of dealing with 4.0 browsers is hiding advanced stylesheets from them with an '@import' directive. older browsers don't support this, and so they can't see any of the css written within a stylesheet imported from another stylesheet. Then there will be a default stylesheet that get's overwritten by the imported stylesheet to give basic style to older browsers. You can make a site look great in a v4 browser, but it's generally not worth the trouble. So few people actually use the browser. Probably well under 2% on average, but then it depends on what type of site you have.
Probably only one person who views the macosx.com fourms views them on mac os 9 using netscape 4 (the poor guy...).

 

[Darkshadow]

That's probably Arden.

Hmm, you could try a little Javascript to check on the version of the browser, then forward 'em to another page that uses the tables if it's an old one. Kind of a pain, but I suppose it would work.

 

[RacerX]

You can make a site look great in a v4 browser, but it's generally not worth the trouble. So few people actually use the browser. Probably well under 2% on average, but then it depends on what type of site you have.

That is actually a poor estimate. A better estimate would be that 40% of those who are still using Windows 98 and Mac OS 8.x are using browsers that do not support CSS.

For a personal site or a site aimed at advanced users, CSS is fine. If you are designing a site to sell to consumers, I suggest limiting your site to the following:

• 
  -HTML
  -PDF 1.2 (Acrobat 3.x)
  -QuickTime 3.x (the version installed with Office 97 as I recall)
  -design to be displayed on a browser running full screen at 800x600

With those you are safe from losing customers. You can move up the versions of QuickTime and PDF and add Flash 4/5 elements if you feel you audience would be willing and able to upgrade/add the plug-ins.

Just remember it is easier for them to just not visit your site rather than upgrade and many people only upgrade their software at the same time they upgrade their hardware.