Excluding all browsers but FireFox 1.5

Do you not want visitors ?
And why ?

What I mean is why not just have a link such as “Not displaying properly ? Click here” ?

If I designed a site that was valid in every respect but looked just as I wanted it in IE, would I be right to banish other browsers ? Or if it was spaced perfectly in Opera and I banned IE / FF ? Or maybe it was a text-based site that I had formatted especially for Lynx – ban all graphical browsers ?

If you want people to see your work, and you want your work to inspire and encourage, let them see it (use images on an explanation page). By not doing so, you will simply not get return visitors.

Not to mention search bots, that you may also exclude from indexing your site.

Nevertheless it can be done. But whethter it’s “simple” or not, depends on your skill in CSS and/or PHP.

According to all my 7 sites statistics, less than 8% of all my visitors use FireFox. It makes no sense to ignore the 92% using whatever they want, even Netscape 4 (less than 0.5%). If all those visitors not using FF click the Google’s FF banner I will purchase a new top of the line computer by 1st quarter 2006 ??

Podz,

I take your advice and will have an explanation page with images. My site is more a proof of principle layout experiment and not really a blog. The site will not display or even work without CSS3 columns.

I am disappointed that the site will not display correctly in safari but I couldn’t care less about ie.

Sometimes it sounds like there is a specific view of what WordPress should be used for, a typical public blog. I think we should keep in mind that different people have different purposes, intentions, and audiences.

For example I have several private or family blogs. Not seeking audience for them; instead I selected WP as a utility blog on which I can control any option I wish, including limiting the audience. Let’s say, for example, I made a Firefox Users Blog… that might be a reason to exclude other browsers. Or simply not wanting 92% IE bozos to read my stuff in a compromised rendering of a CSS design.

Good alternate suggestions, but for power of options it would be interesting to see if the original question can be answered anyway.

Dgold,

In fairness I was probably looking for someone with a piece of code to post it for me. I am quite lazy. When I do create a solution I will come back here and post it.

I agree that with your premise. People have different expectations from wordpress. Mike H. (maybe the most famous) wp blog no longer supports ie (with my full support). Advocates for the cause of not having to spend many hours “mending” your code are personally my favorites.

If my readership does not include people that use ie (for this specific, and specialized site) so be it. I do not want them. It is for that reason that I am disappointed that safari users will not be “welcome”. I use that browser quite often but it doesn’t support the CSS I need, in this case.

I know what I need can be done with php and CSS but was hoping it had already been written. I will come back with a solution in a couple of days.

However, I agree with Podz that people who visit the site need an explanation of why they cannot view it. Perhaps they will then download firefox. Cannot wait to have this site up live. Will post the link here then (week or two).

Many thanks.

Who is Mike H ?

Ditto Podz. Never heard of him…. “most famous” is obviously in the eye of the beholder, ain’t?

Good point, Dgold. Better: EXCELLENT point.

I think that he means Michael Heilemann.

Oh. Oh well.

Here’s a PHP browser checker. Include the file, run the function and it’ll pull the browser name and version number. Then you’ll have to check that it matches or exceeds your requirements.

https://techpatterns.com/downloads/scripts/browser_detection_php_ar2.txt

Personally I’m not one to exclude any visitors but I sure wish I could. Columns would be tasty!

Instead of browser sniffing, try engine sniffing. It would give other Gecko browsers (Camino, K-Meleon, Epiphany, SeaMonkey) the right of passage.

so there is no php that can do it?
or if so, am i blind?
but how do i exclude a browser with the help of that browser check?

The techpattern code above is only half the script. It’ll return two variables for you – the browser name and browser version. You still have to write code that determines what happens when certain conditions are met. That means you need to know PHP to use this script.

There is an example script at the bottom of the text file that delivers different code for non-IE browsers and IE 5+ browsers. It’s a helpful starting point but if you don’t know PHP you’d be better off searching Google for a different script.

Maybe somebody should make a WordPress browser check plugin. It’d be pretty easy with this code.