Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE • Hacker News Board

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#21

Post by jpadvo » Tue, May 08, 2012, 8:42 PM UTC

brlewis wrote: post #2

This may be schadenfreude, but as someone who's been around the web a long time, it really tickles me to see Microsoft have to fake their user agent string to get around an arbitrary browser restriction. Other browsers used to fake the IE user agent string. I suppose it's full circle since IE originally had to pose as Netscape's browser (Mozilla compatible).

Same circumstance in both cases, though: _developers_, not browser vendors, unnecessarily restricting functionality based on browser sniffing.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#22

Post by sauravc » Tue, May 08, 2012, 8:43 PM UTC

IE may be annoying, and I certainly sympathize with the Paydirt crew. But this author makes a good point: "it’s exactly this type of behavior (writing for or against specific browsers) that sets the Web back again."

Sometimes doing the right thing isn't the easiest path forward.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#23

Post by reybango » Tue, May 08, 2012, 8:48 PM UTC

amishforkfight wrote: post #4

Just a guess, but the inclusion of -ms prefixes indicate the use of a CSS preprocessor and some off-the-shelf mixin libraries for all the fancy crap.

Possibly. Just seems odd that specific things are added but others aren't.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#24

Post by dmethvin » Tue, May 08, 2012, 9:00 PM UTC

dpearson wrote: post #3

The problem is, IE 9 and 10 are not everywhere. I know for certain that my school (and, I'd be willing to wager, many businesses) only deploys IE 7 and 8. IE 6 still isn't dead, despite Microsoft publicly encouraging migration. Until Microsoft gets IE 9 and 10 adoption up, supporting Internet Explorer is tricky.

Well fine, then Paydirt should say "We require (and test on) IE9 or higher" and not feel bad if they have to throw IE 6/7/8 overboard. It's not any trickier than saying you support the most recent two Firefox releases and don't test on 3.6.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#25

Post by tnorthcutt » Tue, May 08, 2012, 9:06 PM UTC

They were using many CSS3 features supported since IE9, like transforms & border-radius, but just not adding the –ms vendor prefix entry

They had the “-ms” prefix for CSS3 gradients which was added in IE10

They added support for -khtml-box-shadow but not -ms-box-shadow???

They didn’t support Opera either unfortunately

All this crap recently about web standards and Opera adopting the webkit prefix and how bad some people think that is for the web? Paydirt, and people who think like them, are a huge part of the problem. Please don't do stuff like this.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#26

Post by mikeryan » Tue, May 08, 2012, 9:06 PM UTC

moron wrote: post #19

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #12

So, if Microsoft renamed IE10 to something entirely different, and packaged it as a standalone browser, would a site like Paydirt support it then? It seems to work fine, so why not? This, and comments like "The site happening to work" seem to have an underlying prejudice about IE. "It was IE, so it must be fucked some way or another." The old versions are, but try running the site on Chrome 1, or Firefox 3.6 (I belie…

> This, and comments like "The site happening to work" seem to have an underlying prejudice about IE. "It was IE, so it must be fucked some way or another." If it's my comment you're referring to, I said it "happens" to work in IE because if we are to believe the team, they didn't try to make it work in IE. It just does, by coincidence, for now . Support is a commitment, and committing to IE will mean work down the r…

It just does, by coincidence, for now

So you're saying its just a fluke that IE9+ supports the same standards as Firefox and Chrome? Amazing luck that.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#27

Post by irahul » Tue, May 08, 2012, 9:07 PM UTC

brlewis wrote: post #2

This may be schadenfreude, but as someone who's been around the web a long time, it really tickles me to see Microsoft have to fake their user agent string to get around an arbitrary browser restriction. Other browsers used to fake the IE user agent string. I suppose it's full circle since IE originally had to pose as Netscape's browser (Mozilla compatible).

The arbitrary restriction(not browsers; explicitly placed by the developers) is there to ensure people don't see a broken version. I don't know about the recent IE versions, but earlier versions needed won't center align when I say `margin: 0 auto`(have to do a text-align: center then reset it in child container), have a different boxing model, doesn't support min-height, won't support hover on all elements etc etc.

Rather than being bothered with placing conditional rules for non-compliant behavior, I would block IE if I can(i.e if a very small number of users are on IE). I don't know if the current IE behaves as expected, but even if it does, the users who aren't running upgraded IE are going to get a broken version and guess who they are going to think is an idiot(HINT: not IE).

My company's site opens up all skewed up on IE because IE won't center the container when I say `margin: 0 auto`. If it were something I was trying to sell, my first instinct would be to check the IE demographics and depending on the numbers, either show a notice regarding using latest version of IE or other standard compliant browser(my preferred scenario), or invest a lot of time to fix it(shivers).

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#28

Post by tjoff » Tue, May 08, 2012, 9:08 PM UTC

moron wrote: post #19

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #12

So, if Microsoft renamed IE10 to something entirely different, and packaged it as a standalone browser, would a site like Paydirt support it then? It seems to work fine, so why not? This, and comments like "The site happening to work" seem to have an underlying prejudice about IE. "It was IE, so it must be fucked some way or another." The old versions are, but try running the site on Chrome 1, or Firefox 3.6 (I belie…

> This, and comments like "The site happening to work" seem to have an underlying prejudice about IE. "It was IE, so it must be fucked some way or another." If it's my comment you're referring to, I said it "happens" to work in IE because if we are to believe the team, they didn't try to make it work in IE. It just does, by coincidence, for now . Support is a commitment, and committing to IE will mean work down the r…

This attitude of "Oh, it works in IE right now so they must just be pedantic asses" is short-sighted.

Ignoring IE 9 and 10 just for laughs and giggles is short-sighted, lazy and downright pathetic. Wouldn't want to be a customer/employee of such a company.

Then again, this is just a marketing ploy, albeit a very short-sighted one. Doesn't really impress either way.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#29

Post by pippy » Tue, May 08, 2012, 9:09 PM UTC

Supporting IE has nothing to do with how well it renders a site.

Supporting IE carries massive baggage as you have to pin yourself to Microsoft's erratic, tactic based release cycles and limiting yourself with future features. Chrome and Firefox now how have rolling releases and are closely tied with the developer community, so new features and rendering uniformity is what you gain.

There's also the ethos you buy into by supporting IE: you're supporting a closed source, proprietary internet.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#30

Post by PaulHoule » Tue, May 08, 2012, 9:14 PM UTC

pippy wrote: post #29

Supporting IE has nothing to do with how well it renders a site. Supporting IE carries massive baggage as you have to pin yourself to Microsoft's erratic, tactic based release cycles and limiting yourself with future features. Chrome and Firefox now how have rolling releases and are closely tied with the developer community, so new features and rendering uniformity is what you gain. There's also the ethos you buy int…

IE's moving to a similar "rapid release" schedule with other browsers.

Microsoft has played many sneaky pete tricks in the browser wars (such as supporting a CSS standard that couldn't be correctly implemented in Netscape's codebase) but you can't blame their release schedule entirely on that -- Windows users tend to be a conservative lot who are terrified that Microsoft will push something that will break their cheap-ass intranet that's held together with string and ear wax.