[RiderOfGiraffes]

I can read it fine when I highlight the text. And the article is quite good - yes. I've up-mud it.

My point remains.

I'm actually technically fairly competent compared with most of my customers. If either of my companies served a web page like that, half my customers wouldn't be able to read it. Is that my problem?? Or theirs?

It's my problem. If you have a web page, you need to decide where the cut-off is. The author here either doesn't know that his page doesn't render correctly, or doesn't care. Either way, if I were a customer, I'd be less than impressed.

So the question remains: Can your customers read your web page(s)?

(In your specific case, jacquesm, I know the answer is "yes")

[unalone]

Give it another try. Sometimes loading a page doesn't work and refreshing fixes it.

Also: With all respect, supporting Konqueror is really stretching support. It's got practically no market share, and isn't even the most popular Linux browser. I'm surprised it isn't working, though: I thought it ran WebKit, and so wouldn't mess up.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Loaded three times, same result each time.

I agree that it's infeasible to support all browsers, and mine, in particular, is almost certainly not worth supporting. In most other circumstances I wouldn't bother to say anything, but here I thought the observation was worth making.

Not everyone sees your web site the way you do. How do you check/test?

[jacquesm]

We have lots of browsers on hand in virtual machines, every major change gets tested in everything we can lay our hands on, we also ask our users to report problems through the help desk, and we work with them to get rid of bugs.

As for having every browser work with your site, sorry but that isn't always possible. There are finite resources for everything, and if you insist on using an out-of-the-ordinary setup with a miniscule portion of the users then you must surely agree that the minor discomforts of that are of your own choosing. Just like, for instance I will not support IE3, IE4 or Netscape 1.2 (and a whole host of other browsers that have met their end-of-life long ago) any more.

I've been a long time user of Konqueror myself, but right now I wouldn't know of any real good reason to continue to use it, Mozilla/FF/Iceweasel or whatever it wants to be called is available just about everywhere for the price of a free download.

Even Opera has a huge following compared to Konqueror, which is now below 0.08%, in spite of being the 'default' browser on a whole bunch of linux distros.

Chances are you're one of very few people that has ever tried to load that page using Konqueror, and chances are that the problem lies in (your old version of) Konqueror, especially since a newer one displays the page correctly.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Let me say from the beginning that I agree that I have a very old version of Konqueror. So old that there are many, many sites that I can't browse. I accept that. I'm not actually complaining that I can't read the text without doing something "special" - namely, highlighting the text.

However, I am quite frankly amazed that I'm being down-mud for pointing out that this is a serious issue. You, jacquesm, are describing extraordinary lengths to ensure that your visitors can read your site. I am pretty sure that the vast majority of people don't go to the lengths you do. And probably they shouldn't.

Perhaps I just didn't make myself clear.

But the point I'm trying to make is that people who care about customers need to make this decision, and need to know they're making it.

Is it not important? Is it not relevant? Is it not an issue for web designers to test across multiple browsers? Do you not care that there are people excluded? Are you not considering this? Have you consciously made the decision as to which browsers you won't support?

Are these questions not appropriate?

Clearly there are people who feel that these are not appropriate questions.

Or maybe I'm being down-mud because they are relevant, people aren't considering them, and I've pricked a conscience or two.

Down-mod me if you choose, but ask yourself why. Better yet, explain why. If people agree with you, you'll get lots of karma. I don't much care about karma, as evidenced by the fact that I've replied again, risking yet more karma in an attempt to make a point that I think is important.

So I've had my say.

As for why I use such an old version of Konqueror, it's a long story. Suffice to say I regularly access HN from hardware so old that I've struggled to run anything more modern than SuSE 8. The system is so fragile that I don't dare try to upgrade anything, because it's likely everything will break, and I really haven't the time to fix it.

[jacquesm]

That's true, however, I think that you are underestimating the number of people that have consciously made the decision that any browser with less than .5% is not worth optimizing for (especially since you'll end up upsetting stuff for more popular browsers if you're not careful), and in some companies/situations that .5% might even be a lot higher.

Even my bank, which has a pretty awesome website (and a correspondingly large budget) does not work when I increase the size of my browser past 2048 pixels or when I visit using Konqueror.

It's not that they couldn't get it to work, it's just that they probably don't even care because it is a problem that is too low on their list of priorities.

It's like that with everything, finite budgets -> some of the apples will fall off the cart, and in some cases that's just too bad.

The people that make the decisions are usually well aware of that.

I think what is more amazing here is that you're actually able to see almost all other sites with a browser that old, considering that the vast majority of the site operators are definitely not testing with that particular setup.

Try finding a store that will sell you 78 rpm records or even an 8 track player. Media readers that are 'behind the times' are most of the time pretty useless, compared to that your elderly browser is doing fine.

Just for the heck of it, here are the stats for a small site:

   mozilla:   160630
   IE:        325291
   Opera:     17869
   Mobile:    45175
   Konqueror: 147

That's unique visitors, not pageviews.

[pbhjpbhj]

Konqueror runs everywhere now doesn't it. Is this Konq 4.2 on KDE3? or Konq on Windows? Also from the screen shot it looks like it's still loading, the frills round the K are uneven??

Fine for me in 4.3.1 on KDE4 on Kubuntu 9.04.

Trying on browsershots ...

[Edit] nothing especially shows in the major browsers indeed looks pretty good in most things; I would say it looks like gzip is not on and YSlow gives the site a grade D. Some large images which could take an age on dialup.