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We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

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21–30 of 167 posts

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#21

Well done! I expect the contrarians to pour in screaming about not leaving anyone out and elitism and corporate users and blah blah blah... But seriously, fuck IE. if you don't have to support it then don't! More power to you! My biggest wish as a developer is for some major site to stop supporting IE. I do feel for the users but I feel it's a necessary evil to get the IE team to either ditch or fix Trident or whatev…

Well, I think Win7 has larger market share than Vista.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#22
post #10

Aw man. As a bootstrapping web business guy, I can say I've had way more problems with supporting iPads and iPhones than IE. IE costs me $0 to support, and I don't even bother (nobody asks!). Supporting hip and popular Apple browsers can run me a grand in a fast minute. Pleasing early adopters without working really well on the iPad3 is a tough sell. I think startups fighting to support I'm not crazy about getting an…

Is there something intrinsic to the WebKit versions on iOS products, or are your problems more general, i.e. learning how to support "limited" devices again (relatively small CPU, GPU, memory)?

What is it about the iPad 1 & 2 that is giving you so many more problems compared to the iPad 3?

I found I was spending way more time on IE bugs with Web app I recently did (~1000 users/month) than any other browser by far.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#24

I support whatever my client needs. They pay, I code. End of story.

I believe HN had a story linked a few months ago where supporting IE was specified as a separate line item in the budget, forcing their clients to really contemplate the costs (in both time & money) supporting such a broken browser family. If that's what you mean, then kudos, as I think it's a great learning moment for clients.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#25
post #10

Aw man. As a bootstrapping web business guy, I can say I've had way more problems with supporting iPads and iPhones than IE. IE costs me $0 to support, and I don't even bother (nobody asks!). Supporting hip and popular Apple browsers can run me a grand in a fast minute. Pleasing early adopters without working really well on the iPad3 is a tough sell. I think startups fighting to support I'm not crazy about getting an…

We're in a similar position, except that we did recently drop the money for a new iPad. FWIW, it's actually a nice piece of kit, as long as you don't mind playing by Apple's rules of course.

However, the browser idiosyncracies drive me nuts, and we spent considerable time not just updating all our graphics but also redoing way too many different parts of our HTML, CSS and JavaScript in order to get the high-res images to display properly and to have the correct version of each image download efficiently on both Retina and lower resolution displays.

Not all of this is Apple's fault. Some of it comes from limitations in the current HTML and CSS specs, which would apply to high-res displays on Android devices as well. But some of it seems to be entirely due to choices in how iOS Safari does things, and the problems aren't limited to high-res images.

I'm still not entirely happy with many of the solutions we are using. I think we have a practical workaround for most of the issues, but often the results behind the scenes are just nasty and hacky. And as you say, it has been vastly more work than supporting IE9, which required approximately zero extra effort.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#26
post #10

Aw man. As a bootstrapping web business guy, I can say I've had way more problems with supporting iPads and iPhones than IE. IE costs me $0 to support, and I don't even bother (nobody asks!). Supporting hip and popular Apple browsers can run me a grand in a fast minute. Pleasing early adopters without working really well on the iPad3 is a tough sell. I think startups fighting to support I'm not crazy about getting an…

Is there something intrinsic to the WebKit versions on iOS products, or are your problems more general, i.e. learning how to support "limited" devices again (relatively small CPU, GPU, memory)? What is it about the iPad 1 & 2 that is giving you so many more problems compared to the iPad 3? I found I was spending way more time on IE bugs with Web app I recently did (~1000 users/month) than any other browser by far.

There are definitely oddities about how iOS Safari does things. Handling orientation changes and using high-resolution images for the devices with Retina displays are repeat offenders.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#27
If you are spending a lot of time fixing html/css issues in IE6, 7 or 8 it maybe due to over using floats and clears. Especially for elements inside a container block which are spread apart from each other like elements in a header block ( or if HTML5).

For the header block where you have elements spread apart from each other the better solution is to add position: relative in the div id="header" and then absolute position the elements within the header (i.e. div id="logo" and on the ul for the navigation; float the li(s) though).

Using floats, margins and clears to position the MAJORITY of your elements will prove to be frustrating once you test in IE (6,7 & sometimes 8).

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there something intrinsic to the WebKit versions on iOS products, or are your problems more general, i.e. learning how to support "limited" devices again (relatively small CPU, GPU, memory)? What is it about the iPad 1 & 2 that is giving you so many more problems compared to the iPad 3? I found I was spending way more time on IE bugs with Web app I recently did (~1000 users/month) than any other browser by far.

There are definitely oddities about how iOS Safari does things. Handling orientation changes and using high-resolution images for the devices with Retina displays are repeat offenders.

Well, adding support for Retina displays is definitely an iOS-specific thing (at least right now).

But orientation changes? Is that not a general "mobile issue" for you? Or is (are) the WebKit build(s) in iOS doing something specifically bad compared to (say) Android?

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#30
post #10

Aw man. As a bootstrapping web business guy, I can say I've had way more problems with supporting iPads and iPhones than IE. IE costs me $0 to support, and I don't even bother (nobody asks!). Supporting hip and popular Apple browsers can run me a grand in a fast minute. Pleasing early adopters without working really well on the iPad3 is a tough sell. I think startups fighting to support I'm not crazy about getting an…

I'm confused why you believe you need hardware for testing? iOS simulator should be plenty sufficient in any standard dev environment...
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