Browser Detection and Cross Browser Support - mozilla.com

[office politics]

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Browser_Detection_and_Cross_Browser_Support

Browser Detection and Cross Browser Support
Improper browser detection can lead to web maintenance nightmares. Rethinking the basics of when and how to detect user agents is crucial to creating maintainable, cross browser web content. This article reviews several approaches to browser detection, their usefulness in specific circumstances to arrive at a common sense approach to browser detection.

edit -

adding a second link for ideas on a testing procedure

Cross Browser Support - Policy and Testing

 

[Baez]

I wholeheartedly agree. But unfortunately that's not the way it works. If you don't use workarounds to support at least IE6, it doesn't help anyone. The user just looks at your page, sees it looks terrible, and never returns. They don't say to themselves "Hmm maybe it's because I need to update my browser". I wish. There's also the issue of several large corporations controlling all upgrades and refusing to move past the default IE6 that comes with XP. In that case they have no choice. But like I said I agree completely.