The new OpenACS site has been tested and commented on by many of you, and I'd like to thank you all for the effort.
Your feedback has resulted in a general spiffying up of the design and in small changes of the layout. The login box has been removed and the login links in the header have been altered, making the layout more logical. Otherwise the homepage follows the blueprint.
In all browsers but Netscape 4.x, that is...
It's become evident that this particular browser was not designed to handle CSS - and perhaps not HTML either - in a comprehensive way. If you ask me, I'd have to say that Netscape 4.x is a non-functioning browser by today's standard. Which is not such a disaster since, as the lean alternative needed by the Linux world, it has been replaced by Opera.
It boils down to this:
Either we do not bother to adapt to Netscape 4.x (more than we have already) or we do indeed bother (make the needed effort, it would be called in that case).
Not bothering would mean that we are done. Bothering would mean that we'd have to take a step back from today's CSS-based centralized design philosophy to yesterday's HTML (<TABLE>) based decentralized ditto. We still wouldn't be able to make the design look perfect on Netscape 4.x, but the main content would be forced to behave.
My radical view is to leave the past behind - and Netscape 4.x is a thing of the past. As I suggested - correct me if I'm wrong, because my entire argument is based on this assumption - no Netscape 4.x user is left without an alternative. Free lightweight browsers are still around, only now they have evolved to fit present expectations.
I'm not suggesting that we sacrifice the Netscape 4.x users, thus, I'm only suggesting that they sacrifice their browser. Am I being unrealistic, or even too realistic? Or just lazy? You decide.
