C. Janine Hodge

A bit of a surprise yesterday, as it was announced that Netscape will receive no further development or support past the end of January 2008. While this is not a great shock, given the miniscule market share Netscape has bore for many years now, it’s still not every day that an Internet icon such as Netscape is laid to rest.

A few people may wonder what impact this will have on the users of the Internet. Personally, I don’t think this is going to have much impact at all on Internet users. Such a tiny market share indicates that few people are still using Netscape. Those people will either readily make the recommended switch to Firefox (which they will find just as easy to use, and more flexible to customization), or they will continue to use their current version of Netscape until other browsers develop enough for newer websites to start breaking in Netscape.

For websites, there are already few website developers paying attention to Netscape precisely because of its small market share, which means they likely either are not testing for Netscape, or do so only in a cursory manner. As well, with the near-clone nature of “modern” Netscape to Firefox, little testing for Netscape has been necessary so long as the desired Firefox rendering occurred. With that said, browsers are developing at an astonishing pace these days, and there are sometimes significant rendering differences from one release to the next as browser developers push harder to comply with W3C standards. As the remaining browsers reach that goal, the Netscape hold-outs will slowly find that newer web sites developed to meet web standards will eventually begin breaking in Netscape, as it will be behind the par for rendering.

What does this mean in terms of my own development practices? Unlike many other web developers, I do still use Netscape for testing. In fact, I use multiple versions to test for backwards compatibility. I don’t think this death knell for Netscape will change that for some time to come.

There are some who will think that ridiculous, but there are a variety of reasons why I intend to continue Netscape support. I also do backwards compatibility testing for Internet Explorer, Firefox / Mozilla, and Opera. Why should I suddenly exclude Netscape from that list? Netscape users have enjoyed the Firefox clone for some time now, and I feel some sort of respect should be shown for that. If I elect to shut out Netscape from my testing cycles, how much respect am I showing to Netscape users for their choice of a reasonably decent, if marginalized, browser? If I eliminate Netscape from my testing cycles this quickly after its discontinuation, that sets a negative precedence of allowing myself to justify dropping support of my own efforts for dead browsers, which - unfortunately - many stubborn or less savvy Internet users use. This begs the question of where to draw the line. I already refuse to support rendering by IE5 / Mac, due to its incredible bugginess - the extra time (read: client money) spent on supporting IE5 / Mac would not yield enough benefit to be justifiable. But there is little difference, currently, between Netscape and Firefox rendering, which means the occasional odd discrepancy usually only takes a few minutes to rectify. If it only takes a few minutes to rectify a usability or aesthetics issue to please one more small market share, that’s worth it… especially if your website is one of few in an endless sea designed and developed by people who don’t care.

There will come a time in the future where I no longer see Netscape support as justifiable, and it may be sooner than I anticipate with the afore-mentioned rapid browser development. But that time will not be in 2008.

Via Web Worker Daily