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Google 'discourages' users of old browsers

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Google 'discourages' users of old browsers

#111

Post by seanflyon »

WorldWideWayne wrote: post #104
drivingmenuts wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Users should be free to use whatever browser they want, on whatever hardware they want, They are. > with the understanding that some sites may use features their browsers don't support. Yep. > Most sites on the Internet are still primarily sources of information, and it's rather disconcerting to see "appification" turning easily accessible pages containing text and images into complex behemoths that only work in th…

>> Users should be free to use whatever browser they want... > They are. Users are free to access sites that don't work on their browser? Sounds like a very desirable freedom to have... >> Most sites on the Internet... > That's covered by the second half of the first quoted sentence. Incorrect. The first half of the sentence that you quoted said "Most sites..." not Google's site. >> there's a marginalising, discrimin…

> buying a completely new phone, computer, laptop and software

Since this would only be a reasonable analogy if that new device and software were completely free, I don't think it would bother me that much. Now that I think of it, they already do this: Google still refuses to support my Ti-83plus. How dare they discriminate against me by supporting some devices and not others.

Re: Google 'discourages' users of old browsers

#112

Post by tracker1 »

userbinator wrote: post #110
tracker1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing web application development since the mid-90's... If you think browser discrimination is new, so are you. NN4 and IE4 were so different from each other it wasn't funny. And by the time IE6 was released it was a godsend. Four years later, it was crap... by the time MS finally picked up development there was far better. Just the same, pushing to abandon anything before IE9 is a hard sell... but when you…

NN4 and IE4 were so different from each other it wasn't funny. On the other hand, those differences are likely to be mostly cosmetic - this was a time when JavaScript was very little-used and pages were still mostly static with little in the way of style, so they were still quite usable across browsers despite looking different. Now that pages are more "appified" there is far more than can break, because of the large…

As I said... web based applications... In other words, I had to interact with both models.. I created some simple box abstractions, but something as simple as a dynamic form (certain inputs visible based on others) was pretty much a pain, since you couldn't break a across multiple segments in NN4.

That doesn't even get into more complex interactions, or the flicker when making UI changes dynamically. For some things I simply re-wrote frame content client-side as it was faster with less "flicker" than trying to manipulate the DOM nodes.

Doing async stuff was interesting, post queues to frames, with the response wrapped similar to jsonp.

I don't miss those days at all...

Re: Google 'discourages' users of old browsers

#113

Post by tracker1 »

marrs wrote: post #95
tracker1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing web application development since the mid-90's... If you think browser discrimination is new, so are you. NN4 and IE4 were so different from each other it wasn't funny. And by the time IE6 was released it was a godsend. Four years later, it was crap... by the time MS finally picked up development there was far better. Just the same, pushing to abandon anything before IE9 is a hard sell... but when you…

But I think there is a difference. IE6 was so far away from the standard that you had real difficulty supporting both, and really couldn't embrace a lot of features other browsers supported well. This was of course by design, intended to keep us from moving away, but it was so rubbish that designers moved anyway. IE9 in contrast is pretty decent. In fact it's perfectly fine for most sites. For me, it's Chrome that is…

By the time IE6 landed, it had over 90% market share... I wasn't about to support edge cases that weren't in IE6 at the time... I do agree in principle though.

I think things are fragmenting a bit, but the core is at least more in line among browsers... after ES6/7 take hold a bit better it will be nice.

I really wish the browser vendors would chose to use UTF8 under the covers for JS strings, and simply fix string handling for characters > 2^16 instead of additional regex flags, and string methods. I think it would fix far more bugs in end user code than those it might create.

Re: Google 'discourages' users of old browsers

#114

Post by thomasfoster96 »

acdha wrote: post #97
thomasfoster96 wrote: post #72

While I do respect Google wanting to move forward and bring along newer features that need newer technology, is it really too much to ask for simple fallbacks for browsers that are otherwise still supported by their vendors? 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 sniffi…

How many security fixes have you backported to Safari 5.1? A lot of Google's upgrade obsession is driven by the fact that they have a LOT of other people's data which is under constant attack.

Browser security issues shouldn't mean that functionality is suddenly thrown back 12 months for certain browsers, rather Google could simply display a banner urging them to update if it's an issue for them. Arguably simpler and makes a bit more sense.

Re: Google 'discourages' users of old browsers

#115

Post by icantthinkofone »

WorldWideWayne wrote: post #107
icantthinkofone wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new IE is better than the old IE but being better than crap is still crap. IE can't hold a candle to the other browsers despite what Microsoft tells you. Known, provable, verifiable.

In the past IE beat the pants off of Netscape and basically invented "Web 2.0" with Microsoft's introduction of XMLHttpRequest. Nowadays IE starts faster and uses less memory than Chrome and has just as much CSS compliance. There are few parts of the HTML5 "standard" that IE doesn't supports. So, what exactly are you talking about? What does "hold a candle" to mean to you? Here are some charts of IE not holding a can…

If you think IE has "just as much compliance" as Chrome, then you don't know browsers and can leave now.

First, you can try http://css3test.com, then you can peruse http://caniuse.com/ When you're done with those, try http://html5test.com but come back for more.

Re: Google 'discourages' users of old browsers

#116

Post by acdha »

thomasfoster96 wrote: post #114
acdha wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many security fixes have you backported to Safari 5.1? A lot of Google's upgrade obsession is driven by the fact that they have a LOT of other people's data which is under constant attack.

Browser security issues shouldn't mean that functionality is suddenly thrown back 12 months for certain browsers, rather Google could simply display a banner urging them to update if it's an issue for them. Arguably simpler and makes a bit more sense.

The question is which browsers you invest your time and money supporting. If the vendor doesn't support a browser, it becomes increasingly hard to justify investing your resources on it and a single block-list makes everything consistent.

Re: Google 'discourages' users of old browsers

#117

Post by 1971genocide »

nfoz wrote: post #101
1971genocide wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has done amazing stuff for the web, so has microsoft, IBM,etc before it. The trick is to not give any one company a lot of power and diversify the power among many corporations etc. Google is still the most innovative company out there but lets hope we realize the time when they will need to step-aside and let other more innovative companies take its place.

Genuinely curious, what "amazing stuff" have Microsoft and IBM done for the web?

Microsoft allowed js in internet explorer, it was an accident but many ppl believe that was the single point from where js took off. My statement was meant for their time. IBM did a lot of thing of important for CS (hardware )during its time so did microsoft. Google is doing similar stuff today with the web and prolly with AI in the near future.
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