WordPress Discontinues Support for Internet Explorer 6
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WordPress Discontinues Support for Internet Explorer 6
1–10 of 24 posts
Re: WordPress Discontinues Support for Internet Explorer 6
#2They are only discontinuing support for the admin part of the package which is very javascript heavy. The default frontend theme will, I am sure, continue to support IE6 for a long time.
Re: WordPress Discontinues Support for Internet Explorer 6
#3There they go trying to be "hip" again, thinking they are important enough to cause trends.
They also stopped supporting PHP 4.4 which means hundreds of thousands of legacy installs no longer do automatic updates because their update code (purposely? lazily?) has a few lines that don't work under PHP 4.
IE6 is one thing to go "meh" about but WordPress installs that do not do fast easy updates are time bombs.
Re: WordPress Discontinues Support for Internet Explorer 6
#4It's funny, I have been around so long in this game that I remember never really liking Netscape, ever.
IE3 in some ways made web dev fun and interesting again. Then IE4 took over and I was pretty happy using it as Netscape grew fat and slow. Netscape 4 was ok and that was the short lived first era of decent browser consistency.
I don't remember much about IE5, head down developing and skipping classes but I do remember when MS broke all our hearts with IE6. It started out all so well then it turned to mush and our faces melted as we glimpsed the future carved in exceptions and special handling.
Web dev from then until very recently has been haunted and stunted and repeatedly annoyed by efforts to include IE6 "Support". Out of a perverse loyalty to doing things well in all browsers and an employer's choices have meant that I have been one of those making an effort all these long dark years. Ten years with a corporate network that I believe is still running IE7 in compatibility mode today taught me lots of useless IE skills and.. creative thinking.
Thanks WP for joining the kill IE6..7..8 effort. 9 isn't bad but they will probably screw it up.
Re: WordPress Discontinues Support for Internet Explorer 6
#5There they go trying to be "hip" again, thinking they are important enough to cause trends. They also stopped supporting PHP 4.4 which means hundreds of thousands of legacy installs no longer do automatic updates because their update code (purposely? lazily?) has a few lines that don't work under PHP 4. IE6 is one thing to go "meh" about but WordPress installs that do not do fast easy updates are time bombs.
I can think of several large sites or organizations who have dropped IE6 support in the past year.
There's nothing lazy about not supporting PHP 4. It is outdated and flawed, and the last release was in 2008. PHP 5 has been out for over 5 years. The fact that those sites are timebombs is not WordPress's fault or their problem.
Re: WordPress Discontinues Support for Internet Explorer 6
#6There they go trying to be "hip" again, thinking they are important enough to cause trends. They also stopped supporting PHP 4.4 which means hundreds of thousands of legacy installs no longer do automatic updates because their update code (purposely? lazily?) has a few lines that don't work under PHP 4. IE6 is one thing to go "meh" about but WordPress installs that do not do fast easy updates are time bombs.
I can think of several large sites or organizations who have dropped IE6 support in the past year. There's nothing lazy about not supporting PHP 4. It is outdated and flawed, and the last release was in 2008. PHP 5 has been out for over 5 years. The fact that those sites are timebombs is not WordPress's fault or their problem.
For modern code that starts off with PHP5 it's fine and understandable to restrict versions.
But WordPress is an "ancient" legacy mess and does not have any advanced code that benefits from PHP5 - you actually have to go out of your way to break it for PHP4. There is nothing in it that cannot be fixed for PHP4 without one extra line or two.
Note that 99.9% of WordPress3 works on PHP4 - only the security updating fails - and it fails in an uncontrolled way, not because it checks for the PHP version and stops - it actually fails silently (which is also typical WP style).
There are hundreds of thousands of shared servers that are still running PHP 4.4.9 just fine and WordPress has a responsibility to make sure security updates keep working if it's easy enough to maintain (and it is).
Re: WordPress Discontinues Support for Internet Explorer 6
#7Cool! Wordpress are becoming part of the solution.
Re: WordPress Discontinues Support for Internet Explorer 6
#8It's funny, I have been around so long in this game that I remember never really liking Netscape, ever. IE3 in some ways made web dev fun and interesting again. Then IE4 took over and I was pretty happy using it as Netscape grew fat and slow. Netscape 4 was ok and that was the short lived first era of decent browser consistency. I don't remember much about IE5, head down developing and skipping classes but I do remem…
Not sure if you're aware of it, but the reason you're being down voted is not because of your comment (which is fine), but because you've included a link to your blog which adds nothing to the discussion and is generally not viewed as a positive thing
[edit: 1 - I upvoted you because I thought your comment was good. 2 - at the time of writing your comment looked to be at about -2 but now it's back in the +ve]
Re: WordPress Discontinues Support for Internet Explorer 6
#9It's funny, I have been around so long in this game that I remember never really liking Netscape, ever. IE3 in some ways made web dev fun and interesting again. Then IE4 took over and I was pretty happy using it as Netscape grew fat and slow. Netscape 4 was ok and that was the short lived first era of decent browser consistency. I don't remember much about IE5, head down developing and skipping classes but I do remem…
Not sure if you're aware of it, but the reason you're being down voted is not because of your comment (which is fine), but because you've included a link to your blog which adds nothing to the discussion and is generally not viewed as a positive thing [edit: 1 - I upvoted you because I thought your comment was good. 2 - at the time of writing your comment looked to be at about -2 but now it's back in the +ve]
Ahh sorry about that I sign my link as a sig all the time out of habit. I guess in a way it could be related as that link is a project I work on that has minimal intentional IE6 support. :) I'll remember that tip regardless.
Re: WordPress Discontinues Support for Internet Explorer 6
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can think of several large sites or organizations who have dropped IE6 support in the past year. There's nothing lazy about not supporting PHP 4. It is outdated and flawed, and the last release was in 2008. PHP 5 has been out for over 5 years. The fact that those sites are timebombs is not WordPress's fault or their problem.
For modern code that starts off with PHP5 it's fine and understandable to restrict versions. But WordPress is an "ancient" legacy mess and does not have any advanced code that benefits from PHP5 - you actually have to go out of your way to break it for PHP4. There is nothing in it that cannot be fixed for PHP4 without one extra line or two. Note that 99.9% of WordPress3 works on PHP4 - only the security updating fail…
I imagine the main reason they moved to PHP5 was not for features but simply because the PHP development team ended support for PHP 4. That means no more security fixes for version 4. This point was mentioned explicitly by WordPress.
WordPress didn't end support until 3 years after PHP 4's end of life. I think that's a more than reasonable amount of time to wait before enforcing an upgrade.
The fact that WordPress does not have any code that benefits from PHP 5 is undoubtedly, in part, due to its extended support for PHP 4.