Okay, so I'm trying to start up my web design business (finally) though it will probably still take a while since I'm having trouble trying to decide which market I want to target. lol.
But the browser issue is becoming something quite apparant...
Obviously, some backwards compatibility is needed. There are still a lot of users out there who don't have the latest and greatest in their software, be it because of Operating Systems, the inability to download onto their machines, or just plain ignorance.
But where do you draw the line?
It seems to me that in the web design world, you should be just as focused on forwards compatibility as you are on backwards compatibility. Of course, using the W3C web standards to build your sites is a great start (That means no more sliced up tables for layout purposes!) but some of the standards aren't supported in browsers like Netscape 4.x and IE 4.x....
There are a lot of designers who find it important to still support these browsers, or at least offer 'graceful degradation'. However, according to most broswer statistics, less than 1% of all internet users still browse with them.
Granted, when your talking billions of people on the internet, less than 1% could definitely mean a number into the hundreds of thousands.... but where do you draw the line?
Which browsers do *you* guys use? If you make web pages, which browsers do you test what the page looks like on? (or do you even bother testing at all ;) lol. I know when I first started, I didn't even know there WAS another browser aside from IE... lol)
Currently, I use Firefox 1.0.4.
I test on the following:
IE 5.x
IE 6.0
Opera 7.x
Opera 8.x
Netscape 7.x
Netscape 8.0
Firefox 1.0
Of course, I also don't have a Macintosh - or I'd add IE 5/Mac, Safari and FF/Mac to the list...
Does anyone on my Flist have access to a mac? If so - would you mind doing some testing for me?
But anyway - is there any reason that anyone here can think of on why I should test on any older browsers than what I've listed? What about browsers that I'm completely forgetting (I have to admit, I'm not up to par on the browser world).
What do you guys think?