With the vast majority of web surfers using browsers that support at least a reasonable level of CSS and other modern standards (albeit not without bugs), is it time to stop making extra efforts to accomodate older browsers? Should designs be built so that, while they might not appear in all their glory on old browsers, they at least degrade gracefully? Or should even that level of backwards compatibility be abondoned? Ultimately, it's an individual decision. Here are a few questions to ask when making your decision:

1) How much time and effort is required to build backwards compatibility into your site? Certainly it's easier not to spend any time thinking about it, but depending on how your site is designed, it may or may not make a lot of difference.

2) How many people are still using old browsers that don't support technologies you're considering? The Counter provides a variety of statistics that may help you make your decision. What percentage of users are you willing to abandon? The latest statistics suggest that at least 98-99% of web surfers are now using browsers that can handle a good amount of CSS.

3) How many of your site's visitors are still using old browsers? Your statistics could be significantly different from those you find at places like The Counter. Depending on how concerned you are about that possibility, you may want to keep a user agent log for a while just to be sure.

4) How much better could your site be for people with modern browsers if you were to use modern techniques?

5) How much easier would your site be to maintain if you built it using modern techniques. I won't go into that, but my experience since I've begun dropping backwards compatibility suggests that maintainance is significantly easier using CSS and related techniques.

I'd like to name just one "don't": if you're going to build a backwards compatibble site that works differently on different browsers, please don'tdeny access to people whose browsers you don't recognize. As a Mozilla user, I've found myself unable to access a number of sites that mistakenly guessed that I was using an old version of Netscape Navigator, or that simply refused access to everything except the most recent versions Internet Explorer. Unless accessing the site with an old browser could actually cause harm, it's best to just display a note saying that the site might work better with browser X, Y or Z, and then let people enter at their own risk.