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Developing for old browsers is (almost) a thing of the past

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Re: Developing for old browsers is (almost) a thing of the past

#31

Post by AndrewDucker »

sek wrote: post #30
AndrewDucker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly not, unless specifically allowed by the IT department. I certainly can't download EXEs past our firewall.

These are very easy to disable(i mean avoid), i don't assume they decode everything what would be very expensive. Just upload the exe file somewhere as .jpg and rename it again after you download it. ... but we are on hacker news, you probably know that yourself ;-) what's the problem? I never worked under such conditions, can they prevent you from executing not white-listed exe files?

"These are very easy to disable"

That would be a sacking offence.

Re: Developing for old browsers is (almost) a thing of the past

#32

Post by hello_moto »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #24
dmethvin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, it really comes down to money. If you are running a consumer retail site that gets traffic from Fortune 500 employees buying stuff on their lunch hour, you will either support IE7 or lose business. Sure IE7 has problems, but they are well known problems at this point. An experienced web designer should know how to deal with them to give IE7 users a degraded but functional experience.

Yeah, true. I just have this dream that all web developers will band together to stop supporting "problem" browsers forcing users and browser makers to fall in line. I mean, correct me if I come off as a spoiled brat but I think they should be making browsers to suit how we build sites and not how they want us to develop them.

That's a political struggle. Not just for browser but any area: control.

Re: Developing for old browsers is (almost) a thing of the past

#33

Post by Tichy »

dmethvin wrote: post #19
untog wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's totally necessary though. Developer's can't be supporting old browsers forever. It's not really our choice, though. If you run an online shopping site and 40% of your customers use IE7, you should support IE7. Urge them to upgrade, sure, but if you want to actually make money you're going to have to bite the bullet and deal with old browsers.

Yep, it really comes down to money. If you are running a consumer retail site that gets traffic from Fortune 500 employees buying stuff on their lunch hour, you will either support IE7 or lose business. Sure IE7 has problems, but they are well known problems at this point. An experienced web designer should know how to deal with them to give IE7 users a degraded but functional experience.

Ironically, those Fortune 500 employees are actually rather unfortunate.

Re: Developing for old browsers is (almost) a thing of the past

#34

Post by edash »

51Cards wrote: post #25
dhh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't do that. We only discriminate against browsers we know will have problems. Like IE6-8. So what we're running is actually a blacklist. If you show up with a browser that's not one of the big four, we're just letting you in on your own accord. I completely agree that whitelisting for browsers is bullshit.

I think cutting IE 8 off is a little premature. I agree it's a hassle to support but I think of for example Rogers Cable, a client of mine still sitting on locked down XP across the entire office base. You just cut their 6000-ish employees off at the knees. They can't install another browser even if they wanted to, and I'm sure that same situation exists in a lot of other corporations.

The original Basecamp isn't going anywhere, so those 6000-ish employees won't be out a thing. They'll just need to advance a few IT years to be able to use Basecamp Next.

From the article:

"We know it’s not always easy to upgrade your browser (or force an upgrade on a client), but we believe it’s necessary to offer the best Basecamp we can possibly make. In addition, we’re not going to move the requirements on Basecamp Classic, so that’ll continue to work for people who are unable to use a modern browser."

Re: Developing for old browsers is (almost) a thing of the past

#35

Post by huskyr »

dmethvin wrote: post #19
untog wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's totally necessary though. Developer's can't be supporting old browsers forever. It's not really our choice, though. If you run an online shopping site and 40% of your customers use IE7, you should support IE7. Urge them to upgrade, sure, but if you want to actually make money you're going to have to bite the bullet and deal with old browsers.

Yep, it really comes down to money. If you are running a consumer retail site that gets traffic from Fortune 500 employees buying stuff on their lunch hour, you will either support IE7 or lose business. Sure IE7 has problems, but they are well known problems at this point. An experienced web designer should know how to deal with them to give IE7 users a degraded but functional experience.

Sure IE7 has problems, but they are well known problems at this point. An experienced web designer should know how to deal with them to give IE7 users a degraded but functional experience.

True for most CSS bugs, but if you're doing lots of Javascript you might reach a point where IE7 just doesn't cope, especially if you're doing lots of Ajax stuff. Of course, you can probably hack something 'degraded', but it does take a lot of time and might lead to difficult code with lots of hacks.

Re: Developing for old browsers is (almost) a thing of the past

#37

Post by badmonkey0001 »

Now the problem becomes mobile browsers... (hover vs. tap, tiny resolutions, differences in form controls, sometimes crippled features that work fine in a "pc" based browser, fluid layout choices, float issues)

There will always be madness.

[edit] Took me a few to find this link again. Do compatibility charts like this look familiar? http://www.quirksmode.org/m/css.html

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