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Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

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

#61

Post by aneth »

What does it mean to "not support" a browser?

Does it mean you know your site is broken in the browser? Does it mean you block that browser? Does it mean you intentionally broke your site in that browser?

None of the above. It means you don't want to waste your QA time testing and fixing minor quirks in the browser and you don't want your users having a degraded experience on that browser. To protect your users, you may or may not provide a warning or block the browser entirely.

Products are in constant development, and every CSS change or javascript feature has the potential to break a browser and require fixes. Just because it works now, doesn't mean it always will.

It appears they successfully attempted to support IE, but decided it was not worth continuing, perhaps because of some breakage OP did not discover. Should they have stripped out any IE supporting code? That seems unnecessary.

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

#62

Post by aaronbrethorst »

rbanffy wrote: post #55

I can see why someone would do it. If you are on Windows, you _can_ use other browsers - every browser is available on Windows. When I allow an IE user to use an application, I have to start testing on IE. In order to do that I'll have to make Selenium do some extra runs (IE 7, 8, 9, 10, Metro mode) under a Windows VM. I also need at least one (Win 7) Windows licenses (probably more, but I may be able to get away wit…

Safari is available for Windows:

System Requirements: Any PC running Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista or Windows 7

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1070?viewlocale=en_US&loca...

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

#63

Post by recoiledsnake »

rbanffy wrote: post #55

I can see why someone would do it. If you are on Windows, you _can_ use other browsers - every browser is available on Windows. When I allow an IE user to use an application, I have to start testing on IE. In order to do that I'll have to make Selenium do some extra runs (IE 7, 8, 9, 10, Metro mode) under a Windows VM. I also need at least one (Win 7) Windows licenses (probably more, but I may be able to get away wit…

Safari is available on Windows.

Anyways, the author's beef was not that IE should be supported at any cost, but the claim that the features needed are not supported in IE and that's why it needs to be banished by User Agent(complete with a broken IE icon display).

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

#64

Post by wheelerwj »

aneth wrote: post #61

What does it mean to "not support" a browser? Does it mean you know your site is broken in the browser? Does it mean you block that browser? Does it mean you intentionally broke your site in that browser? None of the above. It means you don't want to waste your QA time testing and fixing minor quirks in the browser and you don't want your users having a degraded experience on that browser. To protect your users, you…

It seems unnecessary to straight up block potential customers from signing up because of their browser. Encourage them to get the full experience using another browser might be a better idea.

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

#65

Post by darklajid »

rbanffy wrote: post #55

I can see why someone would do it. If you are on Windows, you _can_ use other browsers - every browser is available on Windows. When I allow an IE user to use an application, I have to start testing on IE. In order to do that I'll have to make Selenium do some extra runs (IE 7, 8, 9, 10, Metro mode) under a Windows VM. I also need at least one (Win 7) Windows licenses (probably more, but I may be able to get away wit…

I'm a Firefox user, working exclusively on Windows (although a Linux nut by night).

If a site blocks any browser by user-agent _and I find out about that_ (as a user of FF that's not a regular case) that site is dead. I will create some childish rhymes about the creator of that thing, I'm going to compare it to acoustic couplers or pay phones and .. move on.

There are good reasons to avoid supporting every browser and the IE brand _had_ (and has) problems.

But user agent sniffing? That results in one reaction only (again, of course, limited to 'what I can notice'):

This business isn't able to provide a usable web presence. I'm going elsewhere.

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

#66

Post by toast76 »

aneth wrote: post #61

What does it mean to "not support" a browser? Does it mean you know your site is broken in the browser? Does it mean you block that browser? Does it mean you intentionally broke your site in that browser? None of the above. It means you don't want to waste your QA time testing and fixing minor quirks in the browser and you don't want your users having a degraded experience on that browser. To protect your users, you…

As I mentioned below, the IE "Support" is likely a by-product of using SASS or LESS to compile their CSS.

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

#67

Post by jongalloway2 »

aneth wrote: post #61

What does it mean to "not support" a browser? Does it mean you know your site is broken in the browser? Does it mean you block that browser? Does it mean you intentionally broke your site in that browser? None of the above. It means you don't want to waste your QA time testing and fixing minor quirks in the browser and you don't want your users having a degraded experience on that browser. To protect your users, you…

> It appears they successfully attempted to support IE

No, they wrote standards compliant HTML/CSS/Javascript which should work on any browser, then decided to write some server-side code to check for a user agent and serve different HTML to that user agent.

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

#68

Post by jongalloway2 »

aneth wrote: post #61

What does it mean to "not support" a browser? Does it mean you know your site is broken in the browser? Does it mean you block that browser? Does it mean you intentionally broke your site in that browser? None of the above. It means you don't want to waste your QA time testing and fixing minor quirks in the browser and you don't want your users having a degraded experience on that browser. To protect your users, you…

> It appears they successfully attempted to support IE

No, they wrote standards compliant HTML/CSS/Javascript which should work on any browser, then decided to write some server-side code to check for a user agent and serve different HTML to that user agent.

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

#69

Post by jneen »

rbanffy wrote: post #49
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).

AFAIK, Internet Explorer 10 user agent string starts with "Mozilla" ;-)

Most user-agent strings start with "Mozilla". It's a quirk from the very weird history of the user-agent string.

http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

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

#70

Post by eagsalazar »

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…

- "support is a commitment"

Hey that's a nice quote! You could practically sell anything with a line like that.

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