I am guessing Alexa does not show data for its own site because the toolbar posts there. Also, Alexa chart images in other sites might skew. The traffic would be almost 100% toolbar data posts, chart requests, and relatively little actual site browsing.
Yes they could be clever and filter that stuff out. As I said it is just a guess. Good a reason as any.
From http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html:
"Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author's expression in literary, artistic, or musical form."
It isn't music, it isn't literature. If they say it's not art, I guess it does not fall under copyright law?
Assuming you are mostly worried about script compatibility:
Get it working in very early Firefox, maybe like whenever the XmlHttpRequest object was added. Not that you need use that object, but its a good base line. I currently only test with version 1.0.4, and seems to be a good litmus version for both earlier and later releases.
Odds are real good it will work in IE 5+ after that with very little effort, and even back to IE 4 with a little more effort (just for bragging rights). Don't worry about IE 3. Don't worry at all about the Windows versions. IE and other browsers will work pretty much the same regardless of Windows version. A few builds of IE 5.5 were bad, so if you find something that behaves bad in just that version, don't worry about it.
Firefox is an easy cross platform browser, as in you get the same behavior on Mac, Linux and others as you do in Windows. Get it working on any, you'll be OK with the rest.
Earlier IE is less portable across platforms. For the most part the latest versions for Mac and Linux are well behaved. Don't worry too much about IE 5 and earlier on other platforms besides Windows. If the user is not on Windows, odds are pretty good they don't use IE either.
IE had a solid document object model all the way back in version 4. There is very little you will be doing that won't work that far back. The XmlHttpRequest does not go that far back, but you really only need that for AJAX on the Mac. Your AJAX implementation (if you have one) may require it regardless.
document.getElementById is perhaps the one function you might notice missing in IE4. A simple bit of global script can cure that:
if (!document.getElementById)
document.getElementById=new Function("Id","return this.all[Id];");
I'd recommend: 1. Get it working in early Firefox, any platform. 2. Get that working in whatever IE/Windows combination you currently have. 3. Get that working in IE 5. 4. Try IE 4, see if you can get it to work just for billing and bonus points. 5. Fix what you broke for the early Firefox. 6. Test in the latest version for both browsers in Windows. 7. Address the few issues as users report them.
Forget other browsers. They will toe the line with either IE's or Firefox's document object model. Safari and Opera are examples of browsers making the effort to be compatible with the rest of the web, their latest versions won't give you much trouble (except with obtuse things like vertical buttons).
HTML rendering is another matter entirely, but I'd bet the above recommendations hold true to those as well.
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I am guessing Alexa does not show data for its own site because the toolbar posts there. Also, Alexa chart images in other sites might skew. The traffic would be almost 100% toolbar data posts, chart requests, and relatively little actual site browsing.
Yes they could be clever and filter that stuff out. As I said it is just a guess. Good a reason as any.
From http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html: "Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author's expression in literary, artistic, or musical form." It isn't music, it isn't literature. If they say it's not art, I guess it does not fall under copyright law?
Assuming you are mostly worried about script compatibility:
Get it working in very early Firefox, maybe like whenever the XmlHttpRequest object was added. Not that you need use that object, but its a good base line. I currently only test with version 1.0.4, and seems to be a good litmus version for both earlier and later releases.
Odds are real good it will work in IE 5+ after that with very little effort, and even back to IE 4 with a little more effort (just for bragging rights). Don't worry about IE 3. Don't worry at all about the Windows versions. IE and other browsers will work pretty much the same regardless of Windows version. A few builds of IE 5.5 were bad, so if you find something that behaves bad in just that version, don't worry about it.
Firefox is an easy cross platform browser, as in you get the same behavior on Mac, Linux and others as you do in Windows. Get it working on any, you'll be OK with the rest.
Earlier IE is less portable across platforms. For the most part the latest versions for Mac and Linux are well behaved. Don't worry too much about IE 5 and earlier on other platforms besides Windows. If the user is not on Windows, odds are pretty good they don't use IE either.
IE had a solid document object model all the way back in version 4. There is very little you will be doing that won't work that far back. The XmlHttpRequest does not go that far back, but you really only need that for AJAX on the Mac. Your AJAX implementation (if you have one) may require it regardless.
document.getElementById is perhaps the one function you might notice missing in IE4. A simple bit of global script can cure that:
if (!document.getElementById)
document.getElementById=new Function("Id","return this.all[Id];");
I'd recommend:
1. Get it working in early Firefox, any platform.
2. Get that working in whatever IE/Windows combination you currently have.
3. Get that working in IE 5.
4. Try IE 4, see if you can get it to work just for billing and bonus points.
5. Fix what you broke for the early Firefox.
6. Test in the latest version for both browsers in Windows.
7. Address the few issues as users report them.
Forget other browsers. They will toe the line with either IE's or Firefox's document object model. Safari and Opera are examples of browsers making the effort to be compatible with the rest of the web, their latest versions won't give you much trouble (except with obtuse things like vertical buttons).
HTML rendering is another matter entirely, but I'd bet the above recommendations hold true to those as well.
Cheers