IE vs. Netscape

My company is implementing a very dynamic, transaction based business to business site and we are having an internal debate around the support of Netscape browser on this site.

Basically netscape will not support the dynamic features that have been specified by our business owners - and therefore, we've made a decision to NOT go to extreme measures to program around these issues in order to support netscape. Therefore, netscape users will suffer from a less than ideal user experience. We are aware that Netscape accounts for about 4 to 7% of all browsers.

THE QUESTIONS: Is anyone aware of any other companies that have made similar decisions? What were the results? Are you aware of any documentation that validates a decision not to support netscape?

Absolutely. I don't have any documentation but what else are you going to do? At some point in tim you have to move forward. The newer versions of Netscape many people will tell you are worse than the old ones. They are all based on this Gecko technology that to my knowledge is still in beta, has been in beta for like 6 years, and will likely never come out of beta. I have no idea what Netscape even is anymore. I wouldn't sweat it. I would put up a page for netscape people and tell them you are not supporting them.
Either that or build a different version for it which is likely not practical.

I server on the Oklahoma Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Task Force, the Oklahoma Electronic Commerce Task Force and formerly of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines working groups. While there are those that would offer other opinions I would highly recommend you not limit the interaction on your site to Internet Explorer.

As for Netscape's capabilities and those of the Gecko Engine, I would like to recommend you do a search for "browser standards compatibility" on any search engine. The end result will provide you with some very interesting knowledge.

Basically, where the HTML, XHTML and CSS standards apply IE falls on it's face with about 92% compatibility. The Gecko Engine however is much more compatible.

If your programming has a lot of ActiveX components, you're correct in your assessments. However, what you're missing out on is there are more than just Netscape that don't use ActiveX components. ActiveX works on MS operating systems while it doesn't work on Linux or Mac (at least upon my last review of the subject).

So, don't shoot yourself in the foot and support only IE.