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IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

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Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#51

Post by coderdude »

rbanffy wrote: post #47
coderdude wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE8 is leaps and bounds better than IE6. In IE8 you barely even need to tweak sites to get them to look right. I'd be tickled pink if IE8 was all I had to worry about. IE9 is going to be much better than IE8 -- by leaps and bounds -- but it's still in beta. At least the release candidate is out. Some people are never satisfied and always need something to complain about. I'm sure you'll find something else once IE9 i…

> IE8 is leaps and bounds better than IE6 A brick is leaps and bounds better than IE6 I learned not to attribute to malice what could be explained by incompetence, but, sadly, incompetence alone cannot explain a company the size of Microsoft being unable to offer a modern standards-compliant browser.

>A brick is leaps and bounds better than IE6

That's why it's great news that Microsoft wants users to upgrade to at least IE8. They will have IE9 once they upgrade their ancient OS as well.

We all know how you feel about Microsoft. Your comment being down-voted into oblivion at the bottom of this page is a good show of how you're approaching my comment. Microsoft is making good progress here.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#53

Post by bilban »

EnderMB wrote: post #36

My bosses aren't the most tech-savy people on the planet, but even they realise that it costs them more to pay their developers to build with IE6 in mind than to simply supply people with IE6 a unstyled page to use. Developers need to cut the nonsense and just stop supporting IE6 completely. Hell, our sales tripled (three purchases) from IE6 users when we unstyled their pages. In this day and age there is no need to…

I think that's a good point. You can still have a functional web page working in an older browser. Graceful degradation. I use a modern browser, but I turn off a lot of the functionality - so the web works for me. Accessible websites get a thumbs up from me - you are catering for more than just ie6, by doing so.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#54

Post by coderdude »

MiguelHudnandez wrote: post #43
coderdude wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE8 is leaps and bounds better than IE6. In IE8 you barely even need to tweak sites to get them to look right. I'd be tickled pink if IE8 was all I had to worry about. IE9 is going to be much better than IE8 -- by leaps and bounds -- but it's still in beta. At least the release candidate is out. Some people are never satisfied and always need something to complain about. I'm sure you'll find something else once IE9 i…

IE8 is better than IE6, but if someone is going to upgrade their browser, they should upgrade to the best one available. On windows XP, they can't get IE9, but they can get Chrome, Firefox, or Opera. It'd be like making a trip to a gas station and filling up to half a tank. Because half a tank is better than an empty tank, right? But... while you're going to all that trouble, why not top it off? Of course this strate…

>IE8 is better than IE6, but if someone is going to upgrade their browser, they should upgrade to the best one available. On windows XP, they can't get IE9, but they can get Chrome, Firefox, or Opera.

As I said in an earlier comment, it's not in Microsoft's best interest to move people off Microsoft browsers but it is in developers' best interest to have them move to at least IE8. It's a much better browser that requires very little hackery to get layouts working on. When people finally stop dragging their feet and upgrade their decade old OS then we will have a better Web experience. Don't get on Microsoft about this, blame the people who refuse to upgrade their software.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#55

Post by spjwebster »

coderdude wrote: post #42
alexyim wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I think he mentions a really valid point. Getting users to upgrade from IE6 is good thing, but it's even better to upgrade to Firefox or Chrome instead of IE8.

How is that a valid point? In what alternate universe is it a good idea for Microsoft to attempt to convert their users to a non-Microsoft browser (from Microsoft's stand-point)? Even if it's good for the users, it's their users, and it's entirely logical for them to want to keep them.

In the same (not so) alternate universe where Microsoft offer you the choice of a host of browsers when you first launch IE?

And just because it's the logical thing for them to do, it doesn't mean it's a good idea for our industry.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#56

Post by rbanffy »

kronusaturn wrote: post #41
smackfu wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how old is Win XP?

Are you trying to say you think it's more effective to encourage users to buy Windows 7 (and most likely a new computer to support it) than to encourage them to install Firefox or Chrome for free?

I would rather encourage users to download an easy and newbie-friendly Linux distro and experiment with it.

Sure, XP is an obsolete OS. Modernizing the whole stack is a much better solution than adding a modern browser to an obsolete OS.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#57

Post by spjwebster »

ghurlman wrote: post #7

Sooo... Microsoft links people to Microsoft's browser. This counts as controversy? Shady behavior? Please.

I didn't say it was shady or even controversial, just that it isn't as good a deal as it seems. I had a whole "jumping from the fire back into the frying pan" analogy lined up, but couldn't make a snappy title out of it.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#58

Post by rbanffy »

coderdude wrote: post #51
rbanffy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IE8 is leaps and bounds better than IE6 A brick is leaps and bounds better than IE6 I learned not to attribute to malice what could be explained by incompetence, but, sadly, incompetence alone cannot explain a company the size of Microsoft being unable to offer a modern standards-compliant browser.

>A brick is leaps and bounds better than IE6 That's why it's great news that Microsoft wants users to upgrade to at least IE8. They will have IE9 once they upgrade their ancient OS as well. We all know how you feel about Microsoft. Your comment being down-voted into oblivion at the bottom of this page is a good show of how you're approaching my comment. Microsoft is making good progress here.

> That's why it's great news that Microsoft wants users to upgrade to at least IE8.

Which is the worst browser you can easily download these days.

> They will have IE9 once they upgrade their ancient OS as well.

After they failed miserably to move Windows users out of IE6, forgive me if I am a little skeptical when they suggest the move from IE7 and IE8 to IE9 will be an easy one.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#59

Post by kenjackson »

SwellJoe wrote: post #44
coderdude wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE8 is leaps and bounds better than IE6. In IE8 you barely even need to tweak sites to get them to look right. I'd be tickled pink if IE8 was all I had to worry about. IE9 is going to be much better than IE8 -- by leaps and bounds -- but it's still in beta. At least the release candidate is out. Some people are never satisfied and always need something to complain about. I'm sure you'll find something else once IE9 i…

Somehow the Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera teams manage to provide a modern browser on Windows XP. This isn't about "finding something to complain about". I want a modern web, and I want Microsoft to get out of the way of that happening.

I find it amazing that people seem to be more concerned about upgrading the browser than upgrading the OS. The delta between XP and Win7 is so much larger than IE8 and IE9 that having this discussion is almost embarrassing.

While I get that this may make the life of the HTML5 dev easier -- its just dwarfed by the importance of getting people off of a dangerous OS.

While in theory it would be nice to see MS support XP with IE9, I much prefer they use any means to get people off this OS. I'd even love to see them offer Ubuntu or Win7 as upgrade path. There's just no reason to be on XP. And everything we do to make their lives seemingly easier, really keeps this in this precarious situation.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#60

Post by texel »

coderdude wrote: post #50
SwellJoe wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow the Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera teams manage to provide a modern browser on Windows XP. This isn't about "finding something to complain about". I want a modern web, and I want Microsoft to get out of the way of that happening.

I think you're being a bit unreasonable here. IE9 relies on parts of Windows that just don't exist in XP. Windows XP is ancient by software standards. Sure, Chrome et al. work in all operating systems, but you're upset at Microsoft because they don't want to support an operating system that they want people off of already. It's their decision and I'm glad they want people to upgrade. People got mad because users didn…

That's exactly the point- since they're holding off on upgrading their OS, potentially for a much longer time, they won't even have the option of updating their web browser. An OS upgrade is a much more monumental decision than a browser upgrade, and the inertia is much greater.

At any rate, the fact that IE9 can't backport parts of its OS dependencies is kind of an implementation detail. We're saying Webkit has no problems providing a self-contained modern browsing experience, so IE9 doesn't have to be any different.

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