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| Surfing statistics show that the antiquated Netscape 4.x, for reasons which are beyond
our comprehension, still has a small number of long-suffering, die-hard users. Fig 2
shows the Advanced Preferences menu for 4.76. There is an option in there (see the 5th
check-box down in the screenshot) that allows users to permanently disable cascading style sheets
(CSS). That undesirable option was, in fact, only intended for use by partially-sighted
surfers who, otherwise, had no way of increasing the size of fonts on sites formatted with the
then new CSS techniques. Netscape 6 (there was no version 5) gave users a new option under
View > Increase Font. This meant, thankfully, that the ability for a viewer to disable
style sheets in Advanced Preferences could be, and was, dispensed with. If you still use
version 4, and have normal eyesight, ensure the 'Enable style sheets' option remains ticked. |
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| According to some browser-usage statistics published on the internet in early 2004, 13%
of surfers were doing so with JavaScript disabled (up from 10% in 2002). However, we suspect
that figure must also include users with Java disabled (as the similar names of these unconnected
programming languages are easily confused by computer users). We think this because the
only PCs we have ever come across with JavaScript disabled (as opposed to Java) are the free-to-use
but tightly-restricted ones in public libraries. As far as Internet Explorer users are
concerned, who, at that time, accounted for some 97% of all surfers, few of them, in our experience,
would even know how to disable JavaScript - let alone actually do so. So, where the
13% figure comes from we can't imagine unless, of course, it does include Java. However,
even if the real number were only half the figure stated it would still be a sizeable chunk.
And the figure is, evidently, growing, for whatever reason. This implies it is a good
idea for web designers to check how their pages will behave in a browser with JavaScript disabled.
And there is no easier way to do that than with any version of Netscape, be it 4, 6 or 7.
You would do that simply by toggling on or off the JavaScript option in Advanced Preferences,
followed by clicking the Reload button on the browser's toolbar. We should mention, though,
that disabling JavaScript in Netscape 4 also disables style sheets, even if the 5th check-box
down (in Fig 2) is ticked, so the page being tested will look pretty ugly until you
toggle JavaScript back on. This bug was fixed in version 6. |
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| Fig. 2 (below) This is a screengrab, from Netscape 4.76, on a Windows 98 machine
using XP colours, which shows
the Advanced Preferences area referred to in the column left. |
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