Supporting IE Is Too Much Work • Hacker News Board

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#51

Post by axefrog » Thu, May 10, 2012, 1:07 PM UTC

stutter wrote: post #31

You don't have comments on your blog, so I'll comment here: IE testing is "hard" on a Mac because of the vm requirement, yes. However, that's not even my main issue. If Microsoft facilitated having VMs of each windows installation + browser version available for that OS to developers, it'd still be "hard" but at least they'd be helping. IE only runs on Windows, so if you want to test for Windows you have a bunch of s…

Has it occurred to you that at least you're legally allowed to virtualise Windows+IE for web development testing? On the Windows side of things, devs aren't even allowed to virtualise MacOS! And you complain about lack of options for Mac developers! Pot calling the kettle black?

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#52

Post by eropple » Thu, May 10, 2012, 1:12 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #49

It's pretty funny... Back in 2003 I worked at a place which couldn't test software on Macs because they had an exclusive procurement contract with Dell. As things turned out, I bought my first Mac, with my own money, so I could do this kind of testing. Now today, Macbook Pros are the fashionable thing west coast developers use -- they are pretty nice machines. Except for the fact that they can only be loaded with 8 G…

> Now today, Macbook Pros are the fashionable thing west coast developers use -- they are pretty nice machines. Except for the fact that they can only be loaded with 8 GB of RAM and for the kind of work I do, that's not enough.

All 15" MBPs from Early 2011 onward support 16GB of RAM. It's not documented, but they do.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#53

Post by icodeforlove » Thu, May 10, 2012, 1:13 PM UTC

I can understand not supporting anything <IE9 but it currently doesn't make sense to target away from a browser that follows majority of the standards. Microsoft has already said sorry for the shitty browsers in the past and they have done a pretty good job with creating IE9 (minus the compatibility mode). I find just as many bugs in Chrome/Safari/Firefox as i do in IE9.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#54

Post by doc4t » Thu, May 10, 2012, 1:14 PM UTC

Since so many are complaining about the difficulty of developing/debugging in IE here is a couple of links that should make it easier for you

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1835...

VPC Images for XP/IE6, Vista/IE7, Win7/IE8, Win7/IE9 - you can import the images to VMware and VirtualBox http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1157...

MS Script Debugger and how to http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2004/10/26/247912.aspx

Detecting Memory Leaks http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2007/11/29/tools-for-dete...

VS Express (free) http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-ed...

Firebug Lite http://getfirebug.com/firebuglite

I'm sure there are more some where...

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#55

Post by xutopia » Thu, May 10, 2012, 1:17 PM UTC

doc4t wrote: post #54

Since so many are complaining about the difficulty of developing/debugging in IE here is a couple of links that should make it easier for you Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1835... VPC Images for XP/IE6, Vista/IE7, Win7/IE8, Win7/IE9 - you can import the images to VMware and VirtualBox http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1157... MS Scrip…

I prefer the ISO than the images for Windows 8 Consumer Preview => http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows-8/iso

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#56

Post by NelsonMinar » Thu, May 10, 2012, 1:20 PM UTC

doc4t wrote: post #54

Since so many are complaining about the difficulty of developing/debugging in IE here is a couple of links that should make it easier for you Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1835... VPC Images for XP/IE6, Vista/IE7, Win7/IE8, Win7/IE9 - you can import the images to VMware and VirtualBox http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1157... MS Scrip…

Microsoft's virtual machine images work great in VirtualBox. It's a bit of a PITA setting them up manually, but it's very easy with the installer shell script at https://github.com/xdissent/ievms#readme

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#57

Post by EdiX » Thu, May 10, 2012, 1:21 PM UTC

axefrog wrote: post #46

EdiX wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sure, the people who worked in the highest positions back in the day employed some shitty tactics way back when Like not allowing other browser on some devices, requiring locked down BIOS, patent lawsuits against competitors. Oh, wait, that all happened this year.

Yeah, they should be more like Apple and make it so you can install whatever you wan... oh wait...

I didn't say Apple is better.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#58

Post by NameNickHN » Thu, May 10, 2012, 1:26 PM UTC

axefrog wrote: post #19

givan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the IE 6 pain no web developer will forgive microsoft for the time lost and pain. They test for IE only because lots of people use it or because their jobs require this, nobody likes IE, it always had bugs, was insecure and most important non standard. IE9 is closer to normal, but microsoft lost is trust, they had the chance to change something much earlier and they did nothing, they are only acting now because…

Oh come on. Microsoft is not some horrible uncle who did you a great wrong and needs "forgiving". It's a company. The people who work there come and go, change departments and so forth. Yeah, sure, the people who worked in the highest positions back in the day employed some shitty tactics way back when, but times have changed, many of those people have moved on and much of the company's outlook has shifted significan…

Optimizing websites for IE has cost webdesigners time and money. It has cost their clients money. It was a frustrating process whereby the designers got heat from their bosses and their clients. That is something most designers will probably remember forever.

It's not the bad software that lost Microsoft so much goodwill from the designers. Software can be fixed. It was the attitude from Microsoft towards the problem. It simply took them too much time to make things better. IE9 might be a good browser and most designers might acknowledge that. But ~10 years is way too long for a big corporation like Microsoft to make things right.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#59

Post by drewmclellan » Thu, May 10, 2012, 1:28 PM UTC

gm wrote: post #50

stutter wrote: post #31

You don't have comments on your blog, so I'll comment here: IE testing is "hard" on a Mac because of the vm requirement, yes. However, that's not even my main issue. If Microsoft facilitated having VMs of each windows installation + browser version available for that OS to developers, it'd still be "hard" but at least they'd be helping. IE only runs on Windows, so if you want to test for Windows you have a bunch of s…

Hmmm In IE9 you can switch browser mode to previous versions (back to IE7). Seems a lot of people on HN are still stuck X years ago when things sucked and they refuse to look at things as they are today, just like you state in your "IE9 might be amazing [...]" comment. That just calls into question, though, your comments on how hard it _is_ to develop for IE. All you have said is how hard it _was_ to develop for IE.…

You can, but then you're not testing IE7, you're testing IE9 in IE7 mode. That's a condition which may be worth testing in some circumstances, but it's not the same as testing IE7 properly.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#60

Post by chris_wot » Thu, May 10, 2012, 1:36 PM UTC

Interesting. I created a javascript module that emulates an ActiveX control. It needs to parse binary data sent from the web server.

I actually got it working in Opera, Firefox, Chrome and Safari via JDataView, which parses the binary data via a string. However, it doesn't work in Internet Explorer because IE will not read past a zero byte (null character). The data is actually there, you can see it in the debugger, but it won't let you get to it. This behaviour isn't mandated by the ECMA spec, and all other browsers handle it fine.

You can do a massive VBScript hack, which may stop working at any time. I decided that I'd not support Internet Explorer because I can't use it - even in IE9 and 10. Call me lazy if you like - I don't care. I'm not hacking up VBscript to get around a crazy Microsoft Javascript string processing decision!