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Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

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Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#91

Post by esbwhat »

DanBC wrote: post #53
kentbrew wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking only on my own behalf and not as part of Lexity, for whom I no longer work, I'd have to say that I'm fine with the risk of losing business from people who are unwilling or unable to update from a seven-year-old browser, "assistive" or not. Sorry to sound short about this, but it's the same sort of thing that happens when a road turns into a freeway. For everyone's safety, you don't get to ride your bicycle.

Bob sells software. To run that software Ann needs X, Y, and Z. When Bob tells Ann that she must have X, Y, and Z to run the software he is giving her important information. When Bob tells Ann (who is blind, or deaf, or has a motor-control disability (or just likes the software she uses), but who also buys the software her engineers use) that she cannot get information about the product that he sells because she uses…

This all sounds nice and reasonable, until you realize that these companies have to pay people to actually make it work in a browser that's 10 years old. Their website is a product, and they can choose who to offer it to. This is like complaining that this android app won't work on your 10 year old dumbphone.

Yes, it sucks that some screen reading software depends on outdated browsers, but the fault lies at the manufacturers of that software, not every single website designer in the world. IE7 doesn't work, even for simple layouts, it doesn't work. Furthermore, it's insecure. Maybe they didn't want their customers accounts being compromised because they use an insecure browser, and then have to hire more people to take care of that person who lost their account becuase they're using software a decade old. I don't go into a store expecting to be able to still buy heroin as my cough medicine of choice, either.

Why should everyone have to pay money to make stuff work in outdated software because the screen reader company refuses to pay money to make their software work with anything but outdated software? Why make compromises and waste time when implementing a new feature because it might screw up the viewing experience in your decade old browser? Why support that browser at all, giving people the impression the site is broken, and not their browser?

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#92

Post by molmalo »

sliverstorm wrote: post #60
beedogs wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But IE6 won't even run on new versions of Windows. You'd need to run up a VM on a user's machine with a copy of XP. What's the refresh cycle at DoD? Two decades?

So, you just keep using XP. They probably have internal interfaces that aren't forward compatible, and re-factoring anything inside the DoD has got to be stupid expensive.

I don't know the internals of the DOD, but I bet that it's not too much for the costs (that doesn't seem to be a big problem there), but the human resources being used in other priorities.

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#93

Post by slowpoke »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #69
phoboslab wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad analogies. It would be reasonable to charge extra for anyone who enters a shop with a beautiful wooden floor wearing spikes on their shoes. Spikes induce extra maintenance costs - so does IE7.

No, that's ridiculous. This is like taxing the disabled because they cost more money.

Entering a shop wearing spikes is a choice. Being disabled, in contrast, isn't.

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#94

Post by molmalo »

mayneack wrote: post #43
hammock wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another (and more realistic) analogy would be a retailer adding a surcharge to your total when paying by credit card.

That's illegal in most states/violates all credit card agreements for the vendor. (but still a valid comparison)

How about a discount to cash then? Its the opposite, buy has the same result.

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#95

Post by icebraining »

dedward wrote: post #39
coopdog wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair enough. Consumers who can't be bothered upgrading are costing Kogan money by frustrating their developers (assuming good dev/designers are now giving preference to jobs that don't require supporting ie7) It may actually be costing Kogan money overall by driving away some consumers, but no doubt they've done the sums and think the goodwill from the tech crowd and marketing will outweigh that

Blame the customer? Yeah, that works. This is badly worded - no question. I'm no lawyer, but I imagine there may be some law about actually calling it a "tax" - tax tends to imply something imposed by the government. They are of course free to charge whatever surcharges or discounts they want..... A smarter move would simply to have notified the customers upon hitting the site that their browser is incompatible with…

Why is it so strange to pass the cost of supporting IE7 to IE7 users? If anything, I think business should be more effective at passing these costs to the specific consumers.

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#96

Post by timrichard »

mkmcdonald wrote: post #61

Ah; browser elitism continues to pervade the web platform. Perhaps one day developers will realize how to develop working pages for static, decade-old browsers. It's not as hard as bloggers evangelize it to be. HTML and CSS gracefully degrade. Host objects (DOM, etc.) require some care, but can degrade as well. On an open platform with open software, we continue to punish and castigate users for their choice (or lack…

> HTML and CSS gracefully degrade.

I've seen this sentiment tossed around a few times now. I guess it's valid as long as (a) You're not working to strict wireframes, or (b) You are, but you don't have deadlines

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#97

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

slowpoke wrote: post #93
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's ridiculous. This is like taxing the disabled because they cost more money.

Entering a shop wearing spikes is a choice. Being disabled, in contrast, isn't.

Most people aren't forced to wear spikes by their company.

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#98

Post by koide »

mayneack wrote: post #43
hammock wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another (and more realistic) analogy would be a retailer adding a surcharge to your total when paying by credit card.

That's illegal in most states/violates all credit card agreements for the vendor. (but still a valid comparison)

In Europe many get away with it.

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#99

Post by manuscreationis »

mkmcdonald wrote: post #61

Ah; browser elitism continues to pervade the web platform. Perhaps one day developers will realize how to develop working pages for static, decade-old browsers. It's not as hard as bloggers evangelize it to be. HTML and CSS gracefully degrade. Host objects (DOM, etc.) require some care, but can degrade as well. On an open platform with open software, we continue to punish and castigate users for their choice (or lack…

Spoken like someone who has never had to spend hours and days toying with a single design element to get it to work in older versions of IE.

HasLayout?

BoxModel?

These are not things that allow for "graceful degradation"

These things are horrible aberrations birthed forth from hells bowels designed to destroy any chance of having a single, concise, clear approach to CSS and HTML when trying to be backwards compatible.

I'm sorry, but it's time for browsers of a certain age to die off. There is no elitism here; Newer browsers are irrefutably better in every way than the old dregs of IEs growing pains.

Too many man hours are wasted on trying to get things to work in these old browsers, and it simply is not worth it.

This isn't elitism, it's sanity.

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#100

Post by manuscreationis »

mkmcdonald wrote: post #64
billpatrianakos wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you may be right about browser elitism your tone suggests coder elitism. Yeah, we can often allow sites to degrade gracefully but the old web is dying. The days of static sites are almost totally behind us. We're entering a new era in development and sometimes supporting those old browsers is more trouble than it's worth. Penalizing users of older browsers gives them incentive to upgrade. It really is a win win…

I realize that a certain line must be drawn. However, a large subset of browsers can still be supported. I've found that I can support scripted pages until IE 4, wherein `throw` and `try/catch` are not supported. Niceties such as `Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty` and `Function.prototype.call` were introduced in IE 6⁰, so I can accept complaints about IE 5. A SyntaxError followed by a termination of script seem accept…

If it wasn't readily apparent how little you "got it" before this post, saying "We just don't work hard enough" destroys any credibility you may have here.

Sorry, but there's a difference between "working hard" to make sure your site looks good and functions across as many browsers as you can, and wasting hours of your valuable time that could be better spent elsewhere, trying to get older versions of IE to show things properly without damaging all the other browsers.

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