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Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

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Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#121

Post by Draiken »

axefrog wrote: post #110
rickmb wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to encourage my team to test better against IE by creating a nice setup on which they could easily use all relevant IE versions. After two days of struggling with all the insanity of Windows licensing, installing and the crap support for running older / multiple versions of IE I've seen more than enough of Microsoft for the next five years. Nothing has changed since 2000. Just setting up the tools for support…

What I have trouble with is why that's valid when on the reverse side of the coin, one must literally buy Apple hardware to test in an Apple environment.

You obviously never had to work on a huge project that has to support IE browsers.

My company has to do that and we spend countless hours on IE specific tasks.

It works on IE10? great! I don't know if it will on IE11. Or if microsoft will find another way to break open standarts.

If we had a choice of not supporting IE, we'd do it. Not because of Mac, not because of Linux. Because of IE and nothing else.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#122

Post by danssig »

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 have a MBP and I can install what ever I want. What are you talking about?

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#123

Post by danssig »

matt312 wrote: post #40
axefrog wrote: post #3

I honestly think a lot of hacker types really do live in a bubble where they think it's still 2000, Microsoft is still the same evil company they were, Apple still can do no wrong, most people now use Macs "if they know what's good for them", RoR, node.js and Python are really the only valid technologies for back end development and so forth. Certainly plenty of folks out there using the aforementioned technologies a…

You're right, supporting IE9 isn't hard at all. IE8 is the problem. It's amazing how many people still use 8 -- and it's because of corporations who are slow to update software. The thing that annoys me is that Microsoft knows that businesses will use the current version of IE for many years to come, so they should be as cutting edge as possible, but they don't seem to care.

8??? The company I'm at is still on 6!

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#124

Post by [deleted] »

skrebbel wrote: post #84
dlikhten wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a lot of FUD style arguments please let me elaborate: a) Developing on windows is absolutely attrocious. If MS wants me to develop on windows, PUT SOME FUCKING EFFORT INTO IT. b) Developing for Chrome, I support ALL operating systems. c) Developing for FF, I support ALL operating systems. d) Developing for Opera, I support ALL operating systems. e) Developing for Safari, I support OSX, Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8…

> a) Developing on windows is absolutely attrocious. If MS wants me to develop on windows, PUT SOME FUCKING EFFORT INTO IT. Eh? I guess you entirely missed out on the .NET Framework, Powershell, and recent Visual Studios. These are excellent dev tools, in ways the average Emacser will find hard to appreciate. (much in the way the average Visual Studio nerd will find a decent terminal hard to appreciate) From the rest…

[deleted]

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#125

Post by bentlegen »

ethermal wrote: post #119
masklinn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Microsoft facilitated having VMs of each windows installation + browser version available for that OS to developers Which they do, they've been offering complete VM images with various combinations of Windows and IE for some time, the current offering is XP + IE6, Vista + IE7, Win7 + IE8 and Win7 + IE9: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1157... While the images are for VirtualPC, I've yet t…

IE9's debug tools are hands down the best at this point in time. Although Chrome's is cacthing up, pound for pound you will be far more productive in IE9s debug tools then firebug, dragon fly or any other at the moment. I think there is just too much bias at play here.

I sincerely hope this is a joke.

If it isn't, can you demonstrate where IE9 is objectively better than Chrome or Firebug? Because I can do the opposite. As a quick example, IE9 won't let you inspect elements inside of an iframe dynamically generated with JavaScript.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#126

Post by jacquesm »

For the record, I hate IE with a passion. But look at it this way: If you purposefully ignore a segment of the market you open yourself up to attack. Better have that cost-benefit worked out, too much work probably isn't a good excuse at any scale that matters. If you're just playing around then fine, go for it. But if you're playing for keeps then be very careful with decisions like these.

You'll be on your high horse over there telling people to upgrade or gtfo, meanwhile I'll be over here making off with a very large chunk of your potential userbase and everybody they pull along.

That adds up, and if you're not careful it will add up to business failure. Ignore your potential users at your peril.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#127

Post by driverdan »

gaius wrote: post #22

I think a general problem with "webdevs" is they have "year zero" mentality - anything prior to the release of their favourite framework, didn't really exist, and if they do acknowledge its existence, it's only to observe how worthless it is. It's almost religious in nature. You see this in particular in the Ruby world where they are forever reinventing the wheel, but it's certainly not limited to them. IE6, because…

Software is a depreciating asset with a finite life. This is something you need to take into account whether it's writing something for Windows 3.1 or the web. Maintaining, updating, and migrating is part of the lifecycle.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#128

Post by angersock »

dlikhten wrote: post #71
axefrog wrote: post #3

I honestly think a lot of hacker types really do live in a bubble where they think it's still 2000, Microsoft is still the same evil company they were, Apple still can do no wrong, most people now use Macs "if they know what's good for them", RoR, node.js and Python are really the only valid technologies for back end development and so forth. Certainly plenty of folks out there using the aforementioned technologies a…

This is a lot of FUD style arguments please let me elaborate: a) Developing on windows is absolutely attrocious. If MS wants me to develop on windows, PUT SOME FUCKING EFFORT INTO IT. b) Developing for Chrome, I support ALL operating systems. c) Developing for FF, I support ALL operating systems. d) Developing for Opera, I support ALL operating systems. e) Developing for Safari, I support OSX, Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8…

"Now... ITS 20-fucking-12 and windows still has the biggest piece of absolute shit terminal tool possible, with no alternative in sight."

CLI is not a primary way of using Windows. Do you bitch as much when you can't use your terminal on your mobile devices as you do on your dev box? Microsoft has very good (very good) tools for developing things for their stack.

"Furthermore terminal programs that work in linux, work in mac, so you get REAL developer tools. There is nothing decent like that on windows."

Why do you need terminal programs? Jesus fucking Christ--as you pointed out, it's 2012.

"Many things I need for my program to run DOES NOT WORK IN WINDOWS, so it's on MS' head to make them work. Apple saw that having a fully custom OS meant developer alienation. That is why they made OSX. People immediately praised it for it's ability to run dev tools, and developers were happy."

No, those tools that don't work on Windows are due to lazy/busy/shitty developers who can't be bothered to support 90% of the market.

Sorry your tools suck, but don't act like that is in any way Microsoft's fault.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#129

Post by devth »

jasonlotito wrote: post #114
rickmb wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to encourage my team to test better against IE by creating a nice setup on which they could easily use all relevant IE versions. After two days of struggling with all the insanity of Windows licensing, installing and the crap support for running older / multiple versions of IE I've seen more than enough of Microsoft for the next five years. Nothing has changed since 2000. Just setting up the tools for support…

It's not really difficult at all to test. MS provides the virtual machines free of charge, and VirtualBox is free as well. That's everything you need to run and test in IE, from IE6 to IE9 right now.

If you want to test multiple versions of IE, you need to do some time intensive VM cloning to trick VirtualBox into thinking they're actually separate images. Then configure and install IE's debugger tools for each image. Then, when the VMs expire in a few months repeat that process.

Add to that the problem of VMs booting slow, running slow, and consuming tons of memory on my otherwise-fast dev machine.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#130

Post by akmiller »

rickmb wrote: post #96
axefrog wrote: post #3

I honestly think a lot of hacker types really do live in a bubble where they think it's still 2000, Microsoft is still the same evil company they were, Apple still can do no wrong, most people now use Macs "if they know what's good for them", RoR, node.js and Python are really the only valid technologies for back end development and so forth. Certainly plenty of folks out there using the aforementioned technologies a…

I tried to encourage my team to test better against IE by creating a nice setup on which they could easily use all relevant IE versions. After two days of struggling with all the insanity of Windows licensing, installing and the crap support for running older / multiple versions of IE I've seen more than enough of Microsoft for the next five years. Nothing has changed since 2000. Just setting up the tools for support…

Try BrowserStack, it's awesome. I am not affiliated with them in any way, but we have to support several different configurations for our web application and it's pretty impressive. Much better than having several virtual machines locally which I used to do!
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