What is the best way to handle old browser versions?

We have an Extranet with one customer with 20,000 users that has,
unfortunately, standardized on Netscape 4.77 for the entire company. We are
in the process of rewriting this application from Java to .NET and, of
course, would not like to be constrained by the Least Common Denominator
(LCD) this particular company represents.

Question: What is the best way to handle this without having to double the
development effort? For example, MVC pattern, etc.?Hi Jason,

Netscape 4.77? Wow! I don't know what to tell you. Sometimes an IT
manager with a very strong bias or ignorance gets to make decisions he is no
longer qualified to make. For starters I would hit your favorite search
engine. Search for Netscape 4.77 Security - take the first few dozen links
and create a presentation showing the danger your customer is exposing
20,000 users to. If you make this presentation to the people responsible
for giving the 4.77 decision maker his decision making ability you might get
somewhere. Good luck! Ken.

"Jason" <nfr@.nospam.com> wrote in message
news:OYak40CnEHA.2948@.TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
> We have an Extranet with one customer with 20,000 users that has,
> unfortunately, standardized on Netscape 4.77 for the entire company. We
are
> in the process of rewriting this application from Java to .NET and, of
> course, would not like to be constrained by the Least Common Denominator
> (LCD) this particular company represents.
> Question: What is the best way to handle this without having to double the
> development effort? For example, MVC pattern, etc.?
As an addendum to what Ken said, you might also estimate what such security
risks could mean to the company monetarily. I've always had better luck
presenting my case to decision makers when I could attach a dollar value to
my points.

- Wm

--
William Morris
Product Development, Seritas LLC
Kansas City, Missouri

"Ken Dopierala Jr." <kdopierala2@.wi.rr.com> wrote in message
news:OCT$6kGnEHA.4068@.tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> Hi Jason,
> Netscape 4.77? Wow! I don't know what to tell you. Sometimes an IT
> manager with a very strong bias or ignorance gets to make decisions he is
no
> longer qualified to make. For starters I would hit your favorite search
> engine. Search for Netscape 4.77 Security - take the first few dozen
links
> and create a presentation showing the danger your customer is exposing
> 20,000 users to. If you make this presentation to the people responsible
> for giving the 4.77 decision maker his decision making ability you might
get
> somewhere. Good luck! Ken.
> "Jason" <nfr@.nospam.com> wrote in message
> news:OYak40CnEHA.2948@.TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
> > We have an Extranet with one customer with 20,000 users that has,
> > unfortunately, standardized on Netscape 4.77 for the entire company. We
> are
> > in the process of rewriting this application from Java to .NET and, of
> > course, would not like to be constrained by the Least Common Denominator
> > (LCD) this particular company represents.
> > Question: What is the best way to handle this without having to double
the
> > development effort? For example, MVC pattern, etc.?
At my last job we had to support an Internet site opened to all browsers. I
am still having nightmares about supporting Netscape 4.7x time to time :)
You're lucky that you starting a new project in ASP.NET, because
'supposedly' according to Microsoft, it's supposed to work with all browsers.
The way it's achieved is in machine.config file there's a <BrowserCaps>
section that tells ASP.NET which browser supports which standard. So it will
send the right tags/script to the right browser, assuming you're using server
controls rather than Response.Write HTML. BUT there's a big "BUT"! When it
comes to Netscape, most of the tags/scripts will still not work right! For
whatever reasons, this link below is just one of them
http://searchvb.techtarget.com/vsne...x293672,00.html

Also you'll have difficulties getting CustomValidators to work with
Netscape, so you'll have to write server-side validation code…
I can't think of everything that doesn't work with Netscape... You might
have to fine-tune <BrowserCaps> settings to get it to work correctly.

Of course convincing them to upgrade to IE will save you lots of efforts and
development time ($ in general) and give users feature-rich application since
ASP.NET works best with IE. That company is not going to be using Netscape
4.7x forever. Maybe it could be a good opportunity for them to upgrade. They
found good enough reasons to convert from Java to ASP.NET, but they can't
find any good reasons to upgrade to IE? Is not that ironic?

Good luck!

"Jason" wrote:

> We have an Extranet with one customer with 20,000 users that has,
> unfortunately, standardized on Netscape 4.77 for the entire company. We are
> in the process of rewriting this application from Java to .NET and, of
> course, would not like to be constrained by the Least Common Denominator
> (LCD) this particular company represents.
> Question: What is the best way to handle this without having to double the
> development effort? For example, MVC pattern, etc.?
>