Designing For AOL - Your Take

October 06, 2003 | 11 Comments

Recently I’ve had a few of my designs looked at by AOL users and they’ve been found slightly wanting. To be honest, I’ve been pretty remiss when it comes to the AOL browser. In fact, I know very little about how Web pages look to AOL users, I’ve yet to test with a user that uses it, but I imagine there are quite a few out there.

My experience is that many AOL users choose to surf the Web with a separate browser, but when I look at the stats for some sites I run the browser does show up, if in fairly small numbers. I’ve used Browsercam and that can tell me a bit, but it’s not like using the site or sitting down with a user.

I decided I need to learn more. I figured I’d start by talking to fellow designers and developers to see how they thought about designing for AOL, as well as picking their brain a bit.

Unfortunatley, so far I’ve yet to find anyone who knows much more than me about AOL. It seems like not worrying about, or knowing enough about AOL might be fairly common.

So, that’s where you come in. I want to know if you design for AOL, as well as the whys or why nots? Do you feel AOL is important? Do you test with it? Do you have any data about how many users use it?

So, what’s your take on designing for AOL?

Filed under: Web Design

Comments

1. paul hammond said:

AOL maintain a fairly comprehensive website about how to support their browser which is worth a look.

In short, the browser itself is basicly an embedded IE, although they do (did?) some strange stuff at their webcaches which you need to look out for.

Posted on October 6, 2003 01:47 PM | #

2. Scrivs said:

Stoopid AOL. They had Mozilla right there and they let it go…

To be honest, I don’t even think about AOL when designing websites. I don’t think I have ever come across one in my logs, but that is just me.

Posted on October 6, 2003 02:24 PM | #

3. Ryan said:

My rule of thumb was always, “If it looks good in IE5 on a PC, then it should look good in the AOL browser.”

But AOL does crazy stuff. They have a habit of “re-compressing” JPGs such that the image becomes a blurry mess. In rarer instances the image is completely broken - replaced with a solid color (or worse).

This leads me back to accessibility: AOL can screw up every last image, rollover and design flourish, but the text will always be rendered. Using title tags, alt tags, text links and HTML buttons will allow users to navigate the site – even if AOL bungles the display.

Posted on October 6, 2003 03:50 PM | #

4. Stephane said:

I would like to test with AOL but I haven’t figure out how to try their browser without registering. It might only be that I’m missing something but until I can surf with their browser, their out of my browser scope…

Sorry AOL.

Posted on October 6, 2003 04:09 PM | #

5. Mariann said:

I teach two online writing classes and many of my students are AOL users. My mother gave me one of her screen names and I log in by piggybacking on the University’s T-1 line. This lets me check the site to see what works and what doesn’t, although my students usually let me know if they encounter something I didn’t anticpate happening.

When I worked as my University’s webmaster, I frequently tested in AOL because, again, a lot of students, not to mention faculty, staff and parents, were using AOL and it was important that the site be functional in that environment. But with the exception of the course websites or other University related work, I don’t test in AOL unless requested to do so by a client.

Posted on October 6, 2003 04:49 PM | #

6. Mike Steinbaugh said:

I seriously wish AOL would just incorporate Mozilla into their browser…but wait, they discontinued its development!! Argh, I hate AOL. Instead, they opt to continue with an outdated version of Internet Explorer. And let’s be honest, folks, Internet Explorer isn’t exactly the best standards compliance browser out there. I choose not to design for AOL. If my site looks good in it, then great. If not, well, AOL isn’t standards compliant, and there isn’t a whole lot I can do about getting my site to display properly.

I’ve never been a big fan of CSS hacks to get pages to look good in old, outdated browsers, but I do use a few just to please the IE5 crowd.

Posted on October 6, 2003 05:01 PM | #

7. Seamus said:

Only for AOL MAC OS X.

Posted on October 6, 2003 08:30 PM | #

8. Michael said:

I just don’t bother. I think I have yet to see anyone hit my site with an AOL browser, and I’m almost tempted to say that if people do choose to use AOL then it’s their own fault :)

Posted on October 6, 2003 11:51 PM | #

9. Sam Newman said:

We hit a nasty little problem with our load balancer - in the UK at least two requests from the same user are not guaranteed to come from the same IP, as AOL run a clster of servers to manage customer connections. We started seeig some strange logs with our customers pinging between our machines rather than sticking with one. Not a design issue though :-)

Posted on October 7, 2003 03:00 AM | #

10. Dris said:

As I’m sure we all know, in the ideal web, we don’t design for browsers. We design for the web, and it’s up to the browsers to make it work right.

I’m not sure about how badly AOL does things, but if it’s a weird IE5 (as if the original wansn’t bad enough), I think it’s a problem. Part of what the WaSP did was the browser upgrade campaign. Users of AOL really should just use a different browser. It’s not easy to tell users that they have to do such a thing, and to say it in a way that they’ll actually take your suggestion, but perhaps it needs to be done.

Then again, AOL users using the old browser is such a slim minority now, isn’t it? Thus, if less people are using the embedded browser than the number of people still using IE5, it shouldn’t be a concern. Read: WaSP declared the browser upgrade campaign successful a while back. As far as I’m concerned, that makes it acceptable to write CSS that would work in modern browsers.

But that’s just my take. Of course, the content will always be there, no matter the browser. The fact that AOL has a page explaining how to support their browser on your pages instead of them supporting it themselves is a little infuriating, but I digress.

Again, since the end of the browser wars, we design for the web; not for web browsers.

Posted on October 7, 2003 10:10 AM | #

11. Aaron said:

Wow, lots of comments about nobody hitting their sites using AOL. I wish I had your luck! Several eCommerce sites I have running all have a very odd trend. Over the past 4 months I have seen an actual increase in AOL users. And sadly, they are not even newer versions of AOL. I have one site that get 20% of its monthly traffic from AOL 4.0.

Posted on October 19, 2004 01:28 PM | #