Dropped IE support for Instapaper

#1

Post by atestu » Mon, Mar 02, 2009, 11:26 PM UTC

Dropped IE support for Instapaper
marco.org

Re: Dropped IE support for Instapaper

#2

Post by cschep » Tue, Mar 03, 2009, 12:23 AM UTC

I love this. If everyone did this, then Microsoft would lose the power to do whatever it wanted. Standards compliance would not be optional for them anymore. I hope this is a trend that continues.

Re: Dropped IE support for Instapaper

#3

Post by adnymarc » Tue, Mar 03, 2009, 1:30 AM UTC

cschep wrote: post #2

I love this. If everyone did this, then Microsoft would lose the power to do whatever it wanted. Standards compliance would not be optional for them anymore. I hope this is a trend that continues.

I agree and think this is especially relevant for sites and apps that target tech-savvy users - as a group they will most likely already be using a browser other than IE and even if they do will be more likely to understand the reason for lack of total cross browser compatibility. If this became a trend it would begin to do one of two things - either cause Microsoft to consider adopting web standards compliance or cause users to adopt alternate browsers. Both options should be equally as welcome in the web development field and help to reduce the time wasted on needless hacks and workarounds to accommodate one product.

Re: Dropped IE support for Instapaper

#4

Post by earl » Tue, Mar 03, 2009, 1:33 AM UTC

Love it. Please oh please oh please oh please let more web devs do this.

Re: Dropped IE support for Instapaper

#5

Post by amix » Tue, Mar 03, 2009, 1:56 AM UTC

I would not recommend this if you want your product to hit the average user - IE has the biggest market share (still :(). But of course, for Instpaper it's perfectly right to do so since the market is power-users and they mostly us FF (as the author notes).

Re: Dropped IE support for Instapaper

#6

Post by noblethrasher » Tue, Mar 03, 2009, 2:03 AM UTC

The ironic thing is that Internet Explorer + HTML Applications (HTAs) is a much, much better desktop platform than a web browser. In fact, it’s probably one of the best client side platforms for Windows. You can extend it with any ActiveX control (including the .NET framework) and code it with almost any language (including, apparently, Haskell - http://www.haskell.org/haskellscript/). Some time ago I decided to start building all of my organization’s internal apps using HTAs + jQuery. It’s the bees knees (for Windows). It still accounts for most of my profanity usage when having to build actual websites.

Re: Dropped IE support for Instapaper

#7

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 03, 2009, 2:11 AM UTC

amix wrote: post #5

I would not recommend this if you want your product to hit the average user - IE has the biggest market share (still :(). But of course, for Instpaper it's perfectly right to do so since the market is power-users and they mostly us FF (as the author notes).

[deleted]

Re: Dropped IE support for Instapaper

#8

Post by kirse » Tue, Mar 03, 2009, 2:15 AM UTC

I despise websites that do this because I have to use IE7 at work. This is probably the second fastest way for me to banish your website from memory besides being spam.

Everyone on here talks about making the sign-up process as easy as possible, and requiring someone to download and install an entirely new application is about as complex and uninviting as one can get. Us "technical" people are still people, and the more you annoy me with the signup process the less likely I am to complete it. Even starting up a new browser and copying your URL is a nuisance.

Secondly, I've never really had a Safari/FF->IE7 bug that didn't take about 30 minutes of Googling or simply making a sneaky workaround. There might be some cursing in between but it simply has to get done otherwise it's ignoring a big audience.

Edit to Clarify: I am in full support of dropping IE6 as most of you have noted, seeing as how the user base has dropped and the majority of people with IE6 have been "auto-updated" to IE7.

Re: Dropped IE support for Instapaper

#9

Post by noblethrasher » Tue, Mar 03, 2009, 2:19 AM UTC

kirse wrote: post #8

I despise websites that do this because I have to use IE7 at work. This is probably the second fastest way for me to banish your website from memory besides being spam. Everyone on here talks about making the sign-up process as easy as possible, and requiring someone to download and install an entirely new application is about as complex and uninviting as one can get. Us "technical" people are still people, and the m…

Yes, but it's not usually one bug. A bug here and a bug there and pretty soon you're talking about real money. IE7 isn't so bad but I'm seriously contemplating dropping support for IE6 very soon.

Re: Dropped IE support for Instapaper

#10

Post by mrtron » Tue, Mar 03, 2009, 2:26 AM UTC

noblethrasher wrote: post #9

kirse wrote: post #8

I despise websites that do this because I have to use IE7 at work. This is probably the second fastest way for me to banish your website from memory besides being spam. Everyone on here talks about making the sign-up process as easy as possible, and requiring someone to download and install an entirely new application is about as complex and uninviting as one can get. Us "technical" people are still people, and the m…

Yes, but it's not usually one bug. A bug here and a bug there and pretty soon you're talking about real money. IE7 isn't so bad but I'm seriously contemplating dropping support for IE6 very soon.

The 'fixes' aka hacks aren't that difficult.

The problem is it makes everything so brittle and people tend to do things the shitty route just to support IE.

Maybe it was the last changes to fix IE6...but I actually looked up browser percentages and considered dropping support.