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Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

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Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#131

Post by mistercow »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #130
mistercow wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the features hadn't been useful, it wouldn't have worked. Are you seriously going to argue that their strategy – their explicit strategy – was not incredibly harmful to innovation and competition? Also saying they "invented" XMLHttpRequest is a stretch. If I make a browser with a nonstandard rot-13 function, did I "invent" JSRot13?

How on earth is implementing a new feature harmful to innovation? This blatantly contradictory.

Look up "embrace, extend and extinguish".

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#132

Post by gebe »

snowwrestler wrote: post #84
recoiledsnake wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Opera as my main browser and I cringe when clicking on a link in HN which supposedly shows off usage of cool new features in HTML/CSS/JS/WebGL whatever. Then I hunt around the site which breaks on me with no message. Then have to trawl through the HN comments to realize that it only works in Chrome and no one bothers to put that in the headline or on the site. Note that this happens to lots of Google cool featu…

Honest question, and I promise I'm not trying to be antagonistic: why do that to yourself? Why not Chrome or Safari or even Firefox? Why keep using Opera at all?

I am an Opera user as well but I really tried to do the Chrome switch when I got a new laptop and decided on a fresh install of everything. I was thinking that it might be time to begin a new chapter in my personal browser-history-life and hop on the Chrome bandwagon. It didn't take more than a day or two until I got drawn back to Opera though.

I know it's just mostly/only about "old habits die hard" but I just feel that so much is amiss in Chrome. From small things like that I have to get an app to get a dropdown address bar list (I mean really?) or the lack of intuitive hotkeys (my favourite is Opera's ctrl + z for undoing a closed tab) to bigger things like that I have to put up with Google's constant nagging about logging in to this or that or the lack of features that Opera has out the box (like Opera Turbo and such).

An old usage case before I got a no-limit data package plan was trying to save bandwidth while tethering from my phone. In Opera I could first put on Opera Turbo (like a proxy compressing service) and with another two clicks control what elements I want shown. I could easily and intuitively turn off pictures for example and only choose show those that I may want to look at. It was great for surfing light!

I am no rockstar web developer nor am I interested in figuring out what plugins/apps I need. I just want stuff to work, out of the box, while still having access to some cool stuff. And for that Opera works wonders for me (even though the support for it ain't that great ;) )!

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#133

Post by soundslikeneon »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #114
politician wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you are the proprietor of a physical retail business. You're the only employee, so on Sundays you close the shop because otherwise you'd be short-staffed. Do you listen to potential customers who complain that you're not open on Sundays by (a) offering them a degraded experience by letting them shop while you aren't there, (b) hire additional staff to support the shop on Sundays, or (c) tell them to come back…

Did you mean to post this comment to the previous article and not this one? The article shows that the site works in IE9 and IE10. Not to mention that the author not only chose (c) but also posted the equivalent of saying closing the shop on Sundays is a feature because Sundays suck for shopping(which is obviously wrong) and basically advised other sites to do the same.

> The article shows that the site works in IE9 and IE10.

To return to the analogy, a closed store will have stocked shelves and a cash register on sundays. The problem is that the store owner doesn't want to pay someone to work sundays making sure things are ok and stay that way. Likewise, supporting IE is not just a process of running through a site once and saying, "looks good." It requires continual testing, and this testing happens every time the site changes.

Also, Chick-fil-a is closed on Sundays and they claim it is a feature. And some people are religious about browsers too.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#134

Post by biot »

mistercow wrote: post #123
biot wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have a fair point regarding things like ActiveX which only work on Microsoft's own platform and serve to further lock-in to Windows. However, as was pointed out above, XMLHttpRequest is one such nonstandard feature that Microsoft introduced. How is that feature irresponsible and anticompetitive?

The feature is anticompetitive because it was part of a large-scale and well-documented effort within the company to coopt and/or destroy technologies not controlled by themselves. A handful of innovations (which would have happened anyway) that happened along the way do not justify that kind of behavior.

Either you're changing your argument or you failed to articulate your position initially. Nothing justifies Microsoft's abusive practices; that's a non sequitur.

If we take your original statement and change "browser" to "search engine" and "IE" to "Google", we end up with this: "If any single search engine had the marketshare that Google had in its heyday, it would be irresponsible and anticompetitive for them to implement nonstandard features."

If your initial argument was that an illegal monopolist should be unable to introduce any new features, that's an entirely different statement than saying that having a large marketshare means that any new features are irresponsible and anticompetitive.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#135

Post by LocalPCGuy »

IMO, I agree with those that say it is a publicity stunt. It costs very little to support IE9+. Even IE8 doesn't take a ton of time to make it work, although you do have to do something about the CSS3 styles (CSS3PIE, for example.) But it is really dumb to make the choice to BLOCK a browser by user agent. How about feature detection or if you must block by browser, at least do IE8 and below.

Note, I am a front-end dev, and I know the pain of developing for IE6 and IE7. But any front end dev with any professional skills can make a site that works in IE8+ without resorting to ugly hacks (I don't call polyfills hacks.) And IE9 supports a large percentage of the standards we use on a daily basis.

Sorry, dumb move by Paydirt, with no monetary payoff.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#136

Post by chris_wot »

mattmanser wrote: post #111
ilaksh wrote: post #107

IE9 may have caught up on some things, but there are a lot of things it doesn't do, that Safari/Chrome and Firefox (as well as Opera in most cases) do do. So even if it might not be quite as hard now to get it to layout properly (it still is not the same as Chrome/Safari/Firefox/Opera, really, things just don't behave the same unless you train yourself to avoid things that IE9 doesn't like), there are lots of other r…

Oh god, we might as well start asking why FF didn't support ellipse for what seems like decades. Everyone has different release schedules. IE is a lot more conservative because they support enterprise who are mighty touchy. Grow The Fuck Up Cry Baby. I'm all for IE6 and IE7 whining, they suck. I'm even for IE8 and the entire stop at XP whining. Damn MS for that. But you just sound like a total privileged prat who doe…

You're equating ellipses with things like websockets?

Can someone either downvoted or kill this? I've never seen such an abusive and horrid comment on Hacker News!

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#137

Post by ktizo »

eagsalazar wrote: post #78
jneen wrote: post #72

If I, as a developer, decide my site supports a browser, I know I'm going to have to spend some time doing QA on that browser. Standards are cool, but I've run into enough FF and Chrome bugs that I always test. That being said, the cost of testing in IE is waaay higher than the cost of testing in FF and Chrome. Why? Because FF and Chrome are cross-platform, I and my fellow developers can test on our OS of choice. Wit…

Aren't you creating an artificial dichotomy? The options you imply are: 1. block all IE9+ 2. spend lots of time and money making the site perfect in IE9+ What about this? 3. Have a quick glance and if things look 95% ok, let people know it is not optimized for IE9+ via a subtle notification. (That actually requires no more developer resources than blocking IE9 explicitly) Or: 4. Set up a VM (it isn't that hard, and y…

But I'm just not following your logic here. I would totally buy "I block MS because MS is evil, has caused me pain in the past, and now I am exacting revenge on them".

That statement needs to be followed by maniacal laughter combined with a swivel leather armchair and an evil looking cat.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#138

Post by yummyfajitas »

barista wrote: post #119
jneen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fair.

So you just agreed the premise of your whole argument above is not valid. Just saying.

The majority of his argument is sound, I'm just engaging in the standard HN practice of nitpicking the details.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#139

Post by JVIDEL »

When I meet with investors all they talk about is traction and traffic.

If you have enough there are no more meeting, no calls, no demos.

You get funded, no questions asked.

IE is no longer 90% of the market, but it's still the biggest browser by market share. There are many early adopters, but not anywhere as much as regular users. Regular users make the bulk of any popular site/webapp's traction, and most of them use IE, period.

A few years from now when IE becomes just another competitor and not the market leader we wont need to develop for it, and that might actually make more regular users move to FF or Chrome.

Meanwhile you have to support it, because IE development will never ever be as difficult as getting enough traction.

Re: Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

#140

Post by [deleted] »

ricardobeat wrote: post #105
jneen wrote: post #72

If I, as a developer, decide my site supports a browser, I know I'm going to have to spend some time doing QA on that browser. Standards are cool, but I've run into enough FF and Chrome bugs that I always test. That being said, the cost of testing in IE is waaay higher than the cost of testing in FF and Chrome. Why? Because FF and Chrome are cross-platform, I and my fellow developers can test on our OS of choice. Wit…

We just keep a couple spare, old win laptops around for testing on IE. They have Win7 with IE9, plus VMs for Also, neither Chrome, Safari or Firefox behave exactly the same on win/mac/linux. Delicate layouts and javascript-heavy apps still have to be tested. IE9 has a large share of the web, and is still growing. It's a perfectly ok browser (except for lack of WebGL). Not supporting it or adding a "not optimized for.…

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