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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

#71

Post by gaius »

mistercow wrote: post #56
jpadvo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, MS doesn't get to dodge blame that easily. They blatantly used non-standard features in their browser to stifle competition. Many developers were complicit in this but that was according to Microsoft's design.

Non standard features like... XMLHttpRequest?

The entire AJAX industry, they invented. What were you saying again?

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

#72

Post by jneen »

If I, as a developer, decide my site supports a browser, I know I'm going to have to spend some time doing QA on that browser. Standards are cool, but I've run into enough FF and Chrome bugs that I always test.

That being said, the cost of testing in IE is waaay higher than the cost of testing in FF and Chrome. Why? Because FF and Chrome are cross-platform, I and my fellow developers can test on our OS of choice. With IE, a testing environment costs my company about $300 per developer.

Not to mention that setting up a VM for testing is the opposite of straightforward. After shaving a few yaks to convert the stupid VHD format to something VirtualBox can understand, you need to hack your local network so the VM can see its host.

Also, the developer tools are crappy. Has anyone worked on those in the last 10 years? I use Chrome for development not because of "web standards", but because the debugging tools are awesome (some people swear by Firebug, also, YMMV).

So I guess the point "support" is a little more complicated than "look, it works!".

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

#73

Post by FuzzyDunlop »

jneen wrote: post #72

If I, as a developer, decide my site supports a browser, I know I'm going to have to spend some time doing QA on that browser. Standards are cool, but I've run into enough FF and Chrome bugs that I always test. That being said, the cost of testing in IE is waaay higher than the cost of testing in FF and Chrome. Why? Because FF and Chrome are cross-platform, I and my fellow developers can test on our OS of choice. Wit…

ievms[1] aims to make testing IE on a non-Windows box less complicated (it depends on VirtualBox).

[1] https://github.com/xdissent/ievms

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

#74

Post by politician »

wheelerwj wrote: post #64
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.

Suppose you are the proprietor of a physical retail business.

You're the only employee, so on Sundays you close the shop because otherwise you'd be short-staffed.

Do you listen to potential customers who complain that you're not open on Sundays by (a) offering them a degraded experience by letting them shop while you aren't there, (b) hire additional staff to support the shop on Sundays, or (c) tell them to come back during normal business hours?

If the amount of revenue you'd make by expanding the number of hours the store is open per week is less than the costs of supporting the additional staff, you ought to pick (c); otherwise, pick (b). It's bloody irrational to pick (a).

Yet, in your post you advocate (a). Why?

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

#75

Post by rickmb »

eagsalazar wrote: post #58

Doesn't anyone realize they just wrote that article and disabled ie9 to attract hipster freelance designers and developers? The whole thing is basically a PR stunt since they realized 99% of their hits were from Mac anyway. Especially having their article on Hacker News was just to get attention from the large freelancer following on HN. I'm no fan of IE. However explicitly blocking IE9 is just idiotic for any other…

From the way you throw the word "hipster" around like an epithet, I already guessed you are not a Mac or Windows user...

Sorry, couldn't resist. My point is, making all those assumptions about people and their motives is just as "idiotic" as blocking IE9 in the first place.

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

#76

Post by rbanffy »

darklajid wrote: post #65
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 an…

> This business isn't able to provide a usable web presence.

Define "usable". It's certainly usable if you are not on IE and, if the resources they'd use to support IE in addition to others are diverted into new and useful features, I'm happy.

Even if you use feature detection, you'll still have to test on IE (and, to do it right, you'1l have to test on a matrix of 3 or 4 OSs (XP, Vista, 7, 8) and 4 browser versions (7, 8, 9 and 10). If IE breaks, you'll still have to fix it in ways other browsers don't break. That costs money.

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

#77

Post by jneen »

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #73
jneen wrote: post #72

If I, as a developer, decide my site supports a browser, I know I'm going to have to spend some time doing QA on that browser. Standards are cool, but I've run into enough FF and Chrome bugs that I always test. That being said, the cost of testing in IE is waaay higher than the cost of testing in FF and Chrome. Why? Because FF and Chrome are cross-platform, I and my fellow developers can test on our OS of choice. Wit…

ievms[1] aims to make testing IE on a non-Windows box less complicated (it depends on VirtualBox). [1] https://github.com/xdissent/ievms

That sounds useful.

This gets me though:

> The VMs provided by Microsoft will not pass the Windows Genuine Advantage and cannot be activated.

I mean, there's a workaround, but where's the love from Microsoft? Don't they want me to be able to test on their browser so my sites will support it?

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

#78

Post by eagsalazar »

jneen wrote: post #72

If I, as a developer, decide my site supports a browser, I know I'm going to have to spend some time doing QA on that browser. Standards are cool, but I've run into enough FF and Chrome bugs that I always test. That being said, the cost of testing in IE is waaay higher than the cost of testing in FF and Chrome. Why? Because FF and Chrome are cross-platform, I and my fellow developers can test on our OS of choice. Wit…

Aren't you creating an artificial dichotomy? The options you imply are:

1. block all IE9+ 2. spend lots of time and money making the site perfect in IE9+

What about this?

3. Have a quick glance and if things look 95% ok, let people know it is not optimized for IE9+ via a subtle notification. (That actually requires no more developer resources than blocking IE9 explicitly)

Or:

4. Set up a VM (it isn't that hard, and you only have to do it once) and just fix the obvious big stuff (which it doesn't appear there are any). Again, very cheap.

I'm no fan of IE or MS in general. Frankly, I'm a shameless hater. But I'm just not following your logic here. I would totally buy "I block MS because MS is evil, has caused me pain in the past, and now I am exacting revenge on them".

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

#79

Post by mkmcdonald »

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…

> 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.

Because they employ more evangelists? The IE team has spent a tremendous amount of resources informing developers about IE 9 and 10. Many of us just don't bother paying attention to them.

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

The irony here is that you're supporting a closed Internet by ignoring browsers. What a wonderful luxury that is.

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

#80

Post by josephcooney »

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" ;-)

Welcome to the internet.
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