Site Best Viewed at Crap, any suggestions?

[webmonster]

Hi all, I am hoping to get some of your opinions on the following issue. My boss is asking me to come up with a way to be sure that the visitors of all the site's we produce some how are presented with all that "Site Best Viewed with IE 6.0 or higher..." crap and other things like suggesting they have a high speed internet connection, speakers for video clips, latest version of windows media player, etc. I think you get the point. He basically wants to let users know how they can best experience the websites.

He mentioned having a popup of some sort come up when the homepage loads or whatever other idea I could come up with. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

The content of the websites are all sports related and will have video clips available and large images, etc. My personal thought on all this is that it is a dumb idea to try to do something like what he is asking for. I have always hated sites that have crap like that on the bottom or whatever saying "Best viewed at 1024x768... IE 6.0" you know the drill. But if I can't convince him to drop the idea all together, what solution would you recommend. Thanks!

[Brak]

I would reccomend putting a link in your footer or somewhere that says "How to best experience this site" In that link, have a page that explains which technologies should be upgraded and whatnot. You could even do some browser-detection to let them know if they're out of date, providing links to upgrade.

The chances are, almost no one will click the link, but your boss will be happy. It's also very non-obtrusive and polite.

[malibu82]

I would reccomend putting a link in your footer or somewhere that says "How to best experience this site" In that link, have a page that explains which technologies should be upgraded and whatnot. You could even do some browser-detection to let them know if they're out of date, providing links to upgrade.

The chances are, almost no one will click the link, but your boss will be happy. It's also very non-obtrusive and polite.

wow, what a great idea! i've struggled with the same type of requests from customers in the past and this is an awesome way to "meet them halfway."

[fatnewt]

Try your best to have the site designed to be cross-compatible... if you can get the site to display well, it shouldn't even be relevant.

But if that's not practical, the link idea would be best, i think.

[Winged Spider]

I wish I could find the Neilson article regarding this subject, but I remember he states that a large number of users found this annoying and would leave the page just based on the "Is best viewed at" disclaimer.

Not many users are going to upgrade their browser, connection speed, media player, and more just to view one site. Your not dealing with web savvy individuals most of the time. A lot of your visitors won't even know how to do the things your going to describe on your best viewed at page/popup/disclaimer.

[Codebox]

I agree that users dont like those "specifications" so you should not put those specifications anywhere on your site. Instead try to make as much effort as possible to provide comfort to as wider audience as possible.

Also, that link idea is not the greatest in that if your website visitor doesnt click the link and she is unable to play some video clip from your site due to compatibility issues,chances are she will never come back to your site...

So follow these tips to be on top of the world:

1. Make a site of 800x600 (760px?) width:
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I am saying this because if you go 100% width of screen, you'll start getting wierd results on higher resolutions with all the text paragraph expanding to a single line... and 800x600 is i guess the most common resolution these days...

2. Allow different media formats:
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Put the top 3 formats online: Windows Media, Quicktime and Real....

3. Stick to basic HTML with very little CSS:
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This way, your site will look good equally in all browsers. Otherwise if u use CSS for positioning etc, then i am afraid different browsers will show different results as CSS support is not fully OK (or in equilibrium) at the moment in different browsers.

4. Try to make fastloading site:
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Dont make a graphics intensive site.. try to get a clean elegant look using minimum images and reasonable html layout.

The above are just the ones i would prefer.. so they might be useful for you too Goodluck..

[revsorg]

This isn't a website problem. The problem is that your manager can't delegate effectively. He's given you the job to do and then wants to meddle and you're not brave or powerful or empowered enough to tell him his request is badly founded. He's trying to drag your website back to 1999 and you're trying to get it to 2010.

Just threaten to leave if he doesn't give you complete power to build the website the right way.