AOL and Explorer
AOL has come up a lot with people I do business with. It is a pretty hard
decision, but because the alternatives are even less tasty (viewers think
there is something wrong with your site, clients think so too,so you end up
omitting even ordinary enhancements in order to build a site that AOL and
other online service's customers can see well).
Example ... I have a FRIEND who is on Netcom, who I have included in a
short list of taste-testers for some of my pages. He gives me very
puzzling reports. He can't see progressive JPEGs, he can't see
backgrounds, he recently looked at some of my art on someone else's
computer and wrote me amazed that he thought I was an abstract artist and
was surprised to find out that I paint realistic pictures.
I have decided that wherever I can do it, I am going to inform people that
if they are using AOL, or something other than a straight internet
connection, and if they don't have the most recent version of either
Explorer or Netscape, they may not be able to see things as they really
are, and that Explorer does not fully implement Frames, so the frames on
the site may not work properly. And then where it is worthwhile doing I'll
give them a text-only or a lowest common denominator version of the pages
and tell them that is what it is.
It will need to be worded a little better, I'm sure, but if people don't
know, what the real cause of the problem is, they will continue to believe
it is us, and they will not even realize they are missing things. Maybe if
enough people did that, their customers would complain and they would
upgrade.