71–80 of 117 posts
I may be misinterpreting the article, but isn't that just graceful degradation?
I'd rather be able to still use the old browser, with the understanding that features might break, instead of Google intentionally breaking features.
Safari 5.1 is pretty old, but it's no IE8. It supports enough HTML5 and CSS3 features to make me think that Google's just being a bit cheeky to non-Chrome older browser users in user-agent sniffing and then not providing a current search page with fallbacks.
By the way, are versions of Chrome at about the same age of these other browsers also being affected?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that people refuse to update. At work, we have not yet upgraded from XP so nothing above IE8 works here - you are not allowed to install any software on your own so no Firefox. If news sites, where the primary content should be text and maybe a couple of images, don't work because they require all kinds of fancy "modern web" features - then it is not a problem with users but a problem with the developers of…
Yeah sure, if IE8 could display CSS properly, that would be the case but unfortunately even basic CSS is quite broken on IE8, it's not just graceful degradation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that people refuse to update. At work, we have not yet upgraded from XP so nothing above IE8 works here - you are not allowed to install any software on your own so no Firefox. If news sites, where the primary content should be text and maybe a couple of images, don't work because they require all kinds of fancy "modern web" features - then it is not a problem with users but a problem with the developers of…
Yeah sure, if IE8 could display CSS properly, that would be the case but unfortunately even basic CSS is quite broken on IE8, it's not just graceful degradation.
I also designed things on IE7 & IE8 and there is definitely some major problems on IE8 which cannot be solved magically by graceful degradation. I think that IE9 is generally fine however, if you design everything with graceful degradation in mind and the website is quite simple it should work (appart for weird borders around images sometimes, but it's fine with a bit of css).
I've definitely experienced z-index bugs, floating bugs, padding bugs, display bugs (with inline & blocks) and core JavaScript bugs in IE8 which are making the website unusable.
IE8 is definitely not IE9, while it's still better than IE7 and there is generally less issues, there is still IE8 specific work to do to make the website compatible. And depending of your strategy within the company, it might not be worth trying to fix these issues. (this is quite costly).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think HN self selects for a bunch of corner cases that are atypical to the problem google is trying to correct for. People who have refused to update due to dislike of a certain OS, browser configuration, have extensions that limit functionality or otherwise knowingly don't update their browser for a specific reason based on technical understanding or aesthetic choice are the corner cases. Obviously, there are just…
As web dev, I am aware of a pain to work with old browsers. However, as user/customer, I perfectly feel for people who have better things to do with their lives, then download, upgrade, update, sometimes spending hours, breaking things, spending more hours to repair them, and so on. In the ideal world, upgrading should be easy and fast, and provide an easy reverse if the user is not happy. As we know, this is not the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, that's a problem with your IT department being stuck about a decade behind.
Some may see your comment as flippant, but it is very accurate. Didn't MS shut off support for that combination of OS and Browser? If so, their IT department is exposing them to security trouble. If so, their competence is in question.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea of the Web as it was sold to many of us was that it allowed for cross-platform access without having to deal with hardware requirements or DLL hell. The best part, was it was completely open and you didn't need to constantly upgrade because the technology degraded. Nowadays, if you run a browser older than 6 weeks old, you're treated with utter disdain by a non-insignificant portion of web developers. We've…
This only happens because it was a broken idea to start with. The web should be about interactive documents, not trying to bend it into a color version of VT100s.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think HN self selects for a bunch of corner cases that are atypical to the problem google is trying to correct for. People who have refused to update due to dislike of a certain OS, browser configuration, have extensions that limit functionality or otherwise knowingly don't update their browser for a specific reason based on technical understanding or aesthetic choice are the corner cases. Obviously, there are just…
As web dev, I am aware of a pain to work with old browsers. However, as user/customer, I perfectly feel for people who have better things to do with their lives, then download, upgrade, update, sometimes spending hours, breaking things, spending more hours to repair them, and so on. In the ideal world, upgrading should be easy and fast, and provide an easy reverse if the user is not happy. As we know, this is not the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As web dev, I am aware of a pain to work with old browsers. However, as user/customer, I perfectly feel for people who have better things to do with their lives, then download, upgrade, update, sometimes spending hours, breaking things, spending more hours to repair them, and so on. In the ideal world, upgrading should be easy and fast, and provide an easy reverse if the user is not happy. As we know, this is not the…
Sure, but once you upgrade to a certain point, your browser should update itself automagically. I know for sure that Chrome auto-updates, as does (I think) IE9. So once that initial investment has been made, this argument doesn't hold true