Re: Target browsers for web development

I don't think anyone's answer here is going to be appropriate for you unless
they really describe their decision making process, and not just the
financial and technical concerns.

For example these are the questions I would ask:

My audience:
Where are they coming from? Lan? AOL? Etc.
What is their upgrade rates? Or response to browser level upgrades?
        What bandwidth do they have?
        Can I facilitate their upgrade? CD-ROM? Do I have access to local
machines?

Is my audience limited to a specific platform?
Etc. etc. etc.

My content/functionality:
Does my content require anything that requires up-to-date coding standards?
Does XHTML? CSS2? Etc. offer me something I need to make my content or my
application work.
Can I scale my releases to cover enough of my market w/ a limited browser/os
set and then add others as I need to support them?

My resources:
Does my development environment accommodate working on a single codeline
that works across the client/os combinations I want to support. If not, what
do I need to change that if at all?
Do my tools make it easy for me to code to standards as opposed to
browser/os combos?
What will be the QA and coding strain on my resources to accomplish these
tasks? Time? People? Etc.

Market Pressure:
Is not having a combo going to have market reprecussions that can't be
ignored. Sometimes this is different from audience concerns in so far as
analyst reports can be quite condemning, as well as competitors who mock you
for lack of support, if they have support (regardless if the audience
dictates it as a requirement).

I'm sure there are a lot more questions like these, but this trend of
thinking is what is necessary to really make an informed decision.

-- dave

David Heller
Sr. User Interface Designer
Documentum: The Leader in Enterprise Content Management
925.600.5636

[email protected]
http://www.documentum.com/
AIM: bolinhanyc  //  Yahoo: dave_ux  //  MSN: [email protected]

--"If it isn't useful, it will never be usable."



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