"Do what the client needs, not what they want."
Great advice I got once.
“But The Client Wants IE 6 Support”
61–70 of 115 posts
Re: “But The Client Wants IE 6 Support”
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not just car rental companies. Most of the UK's major banks use IE6 still. This is because most of their intranet apps will only work in IE6, and they have the size to demand that their supplies support IE6 too. Corporate IT policy won't allow browsers apart from IE. If only Microsoft allowed side-by-side installs of IE6 and a IE8 it might be a bit more bearable (given that IE9 is not available on XP)
> This is because most of their intranet apps will only work in IE6 How did it ever happen that IE6 ended up in such a long lasting and dominating position? Was it (I am just guessing here) the coincidence of tho things: (1) IE6 just happened to be the most recent Microsoft browser around the time when most of bigcorps initially build their inter/intranet apps, and (2) because this was the first wave of building such…
Well, part of it was that there weren't other browsers to worry about. At the time there was no Chrome, no Safari (no one used Macs in a corporate environment if there was), and no Firefox. All that you had was IE and Netscape, and Netscape was on kind of shaky ground at that point.
Those two kind of fought with each other by introducing new features that made web pages incompatible with the others. Also, even then corporations weren't really keen on letting you use some other browser, so IE was the go-to since it was already installed. Since the market was so slim, and seemed to be increasingly vanishing, it seemed easier to justify going with IE's extensions.
If Microsoft had kept updating IE and hadn't let it linger for years, we'd probably still be in the situation where they're in control of the de-facto standard. It's only because they sat with their thumb up their ass that things like Firefox and Chrome were able to get footholds and start disrupting the situation. Already being present and practically being named "The Internet" are really big adoption factors.
Re: “But The Client Wants IE 6 Support”
#63"We have a responsibility to ourselves and to the Web to follow the principle of universality." Not feeling that at all, so speak for yourself. If I want to target a specific browser or device, I do it when it makes sense. Screw universality. The users install what I tell them to or they don't get the privilege of using my site or product. (Do you think Steve Jobs would disagree?)
That sounds like a great recipe to start justifying shaving off fractions of your market until you're down to only reaching 40%. Not saying that's what you're doing, but any kind of "Screw X, I will tell the users what they want" decisions have to be made carefully. It's a lot easier to think you've made a Steve Jobs kind of product than it is to actually make one.
Re: “But The Client Wants IE 6 Support”
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we had genderless pronouns we wouldn't have to care about details like that which don't materially affect the article or its criticisms. Having said that, fields with a more even gender ratio have had to deal with this for a while - what do they do?
English does have a genderless singular pronoun: They Just because a book said it was preferred in 1848 to use he when sex is indeterminate (then went on to use both singular he and singular they) doesn't mean that's true today. The language always used both. Why stop today? Might feel a bit odd at first if you're not used to it, but it's not a bit different than how singular "you" is used ("You are coming today?" us…
"You" started out plural. "Thou" was the singular version. Then "you" started being a form of respect, similar to the royal "we" or the Spanish "usted". Finally, we all became "you"s, sort of how we all became "sirs and madams" and "ladies and gentlemen" when those were originally a select class.
Anyway, "They" has been undergoing this process for a few centuries now, and I concur that it's time to embrace it.
Re: “But The Client Wants IE 6 Support”
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me that's lying to them. While supporting IE6 is onerous extra work, it's still work that can be done and has little impact on the final product. Take the other position, that 'Not supporting IE6 will mean I'll charge you 70% of my original quote, only x% of people use it in your target market' or better add it as an extra in the quote in the first place as the article suggests. Then it's up to them, it's a risk a…
I think the article is realistic in terms of IE6 support costs if you're not just building a simple website. Trying to build a responsive, dynamic webapp, that is identical in IE6 to a modern browser can easily add a lot of time. Just as an example, producing all the graphics for rounded corners, rather than being able to do them in CSS.
I've found that people don't really notice or care when IE shows them square corners.
The thing about IE6/7 support is that it's a complete known quantity at this point. The problems & workarounds are well documented. There's tons of experienced HTML coders out there that know IE backwards and forwards. CSS frameworks like OOCSS include built-in workarounds.
So if IE support doubles the cost, it must either be something very complex, or a real nickle-and-dime project. (Either that or the webdev doesn't really what they're doing.)
Re: “But The Client Wants IE 6 Support”
#66"Even if they don’t care about accessibility, my responsibility is to make the website somewhat accessible." I'm unclear on who the legal requirements for accessibility fall on exactly so I may not understand properly... but I'd think this is a legal requirement to make your website accessible (at least in the US under Section... 508?)
Re: “But The Client Wants IE 6 Support”
#67Perhaps I am naive but this conversation seems easy to resolve with just a few words. Can anyone tell me how a client would respond to this: You can have a site with newer, nicer features, or you can have a site that supports older browsers. If you want both then you are commissioning two distinct websites. If you want usage statistics for old browsers I have them, and if you want to be economical I can produce the s…
If they want fancy new features, just use Modernizr with a polyfill. That generally seems like a better solution for the dwindling population of legacy browser users than creating a completely different codebase.
You are still creating another site even when using polyfills. The surface area for display bugs in a polyfill is > 0.
Re: “But The Client Wants IE 6 Support”
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not just car rental companies. Most of the UK's major banks use IE6 still. This is because most of their intranet apps will only work in IE6, and they have the size to demand that their supplies support IE6 too. Corporate IT policy won't allow browsers apart from IE. If only Microsoft allowed side-by-side installs of IE6 and a IE8 it might be a bit more bearable (given that IE9 is not available on XP)
> This is because most of their intranet apps will only work in IE6 How did it ever happen that IE6 ended up in such a long lasting and dominating position? Was it (I am just guessing here) the coincidence of tho things: (1) IE6 just happened to be the most recent Microsoft browser around the time when most of bigcorps initially build their inter/intranet apps, and (2) because this was the first wave of building such…
In addition to what others have said, don't forget that ActiveX also played a strong role. ActiveX was pretty widely used in business-oriented web applications, which hindered business adoption of firefox even among those companies or individuals who wanted to move to it.
There was also a general distrust of open source software during the time that firefox was gaining adoption. With so much malware being spread via the browser (IE6), there was a fear that firefox's open source development model and perceived immaturity were a security and support risk.
Re: “But The Client Wants IE 6 Support”
#69This article is great, but it works on the premise that IE6 support is a purely rational discussion by two knowledgeable parties before a contract is signed. -- In reality, you may develop a website, then the client is visiting their uncle bob one weekend who has an old computer with IE6 lying around, client + uncle bob open up the website to have a look, and it is "broken". Client then sends you a hate mail about br…
Except it usually isn't "uncle bob", it's their biggest customer who still uses IE6, they're losing business, emergency, etc.
Re: “But The Client Wants IE 6 Support”
#70Maybe I'm missing something, but recently there has been a lot of work in graceful degradation. Such examples include Modernizr (based upon yep-nope) which allow detection of features and asynchronous loading of polyfils for missing functionality. Missing css3 support for IE6-8 comes in a 10 second fix called CSS3PIE. To use it you add 1 css line to apply the htc to the necessary classes (or all with the * selector) and there you have curved corners in IE6-8 with no additional work.