Categories
Mozilla

Mozilla 1.5 Out / Website

Mozilla 1.5 is out! IMHO a great release. Rock solid. Firebird 0.7 is also out.

I’ve got to bring up a few things about what will be the new Mozilla.org website soon. Why is this being done in XHTML? Why loose that portion of an audience, that is potentially going to switch? The easiest group to get switching is people with older browsers. These people are going to see a rather crummy page. XHTML is great, don’t get me wrong. But there is a time and a place. On a website that needs 100% compatibility to entice people to switch, having an XHTML isn’t a wise idea.

I must admit, I absolutely love the design. And I also must say, I wouldn’t mind having that Nice “M” logo as the icon for Mozilla. That’s a nice version of it. Very nice.

I’m not a fan of going to XHTML on this website. I’m of the belief that it will deter the easiest crowd to persuade to move. The older browser guys. Netscape 4 is still rather widely distributed in corporations. It’s not an extinct browser like some infer. It’s still on quite a few computers. They are the most likely candidates to switch. We should embrace them.

The only way I see it working is if there is a redirect for non-xhtml browsers to the old design. Perhaps prompt them to upgrade to see the new site.

Again, I absolutely love the design. One of the best page designs I’ve seen in a long time.

3 replies on “Mozilla 1.5 Out / Website”

Netscape 4 users are not the Mozilla target, they count for less than 1% of total users and people who still use are mostly people who can’t upgrade because their harware is not fast enough for modern browsers. Having a crappy website because of NS4 does not make sense. The new website will also help Technology evangelists to promote standards, difficult to say to webdesigners that they should support current standards (and consecuently gecko) when your own website is coded like in 96

Looking at the site in NS4, it really isn’t all that bad. Perhaps it could be made a little better with a dirt-simple style sheet, but I don’t really see the need. Its very easy to navigate around in using NS4. (Remember this is XHTML1.0 served as text/html, not XHTML1.1, served with an XML mime type.)

I am the person who coded the new pages (the design is not mine though, it’s Dave Shea’s, of CSS Zen Garden fame).

I agree with what Pascal said: XHTML 1.0 is fine when served as text/html. And it’s time to move on and adopt XHTML, CSS and accessibility. Also, being the author of http://devedge.netscape.com/vi.....standards/ , I tend to do what I preach 🙂

Whether the final version of the site will be with XHMTL or HTML is still to be seen, anyway. But it would not solve the issue you raise, as it will sport CSS anyway, and it would not change the Netscape 4 users’ experience in any way.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *