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I don't know how to IE6

blog.colbyrabideau.com

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Re: I don't know how to IE6

#71

Post by dave_sullivan »

true_religion wrote: post #49
mattdeboard wrote: post #3

Why did you have the impression a B.S. in CompSci would teach you about legacy browser support? I dunno, the first few weeks of my internship I had to do the same thing. If nothing else it was a great way to learn about what the company did by doing low-level grunt work. However I'd really recommend that if this is all you'll be doing for the duration of the internship, maybe look for something else. Otherwise be tha…

I hate to make a "me too" like post, but as soon as I read his biography, I thought "... wait we should stop supporting X browser because some kid doesn't know how to support it too?". Are we now just leveling the playing field so experience is irrelevant, and kids just out of college should be able to compete with those who have been working the field for ages (ages which I might add included a time when IE6 was the…

Re: fresh out of college kids competing with the oldtimers, I'm thinking that yes, the field is being leveled and certain types of experience are worth less and less. The greater the pace of innovation, the greater the chance that new tools are adopted that make certain knowledge obsolete. This is good in many ways, but it also requires constant learning and change, which is frustrating. Not that it's right or wrong, but I think it's the reality. Once this plays out, I really think we'll see calls for unionization, which would be unfortunate.

Re: supporting IE6, there's a cost associated with that. So if someone shows me that 20% of my traffic comes from IE6 users and that traffic is profitable traffic (enough profit to offset the costs) then yes, let's support IE6. But I think the payoff on supporting IE6 is becoming lower and lower.

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#73

Post by ansonparker »

I look after an Australian e-commerce site. About 6.5% of our users are on IE6 (I assume they're mainly office-workers on shitty, out-dated PCs).

That is way too big a chunk of revenue to ignore in the name of ideals or standards or what-have-you.

But please, feel free to redirect any IE6 visitors to your blog to whatever the latest "IE6 is shit and you're an idiot" single serving site of the moment is.

I agree that IE6 is a turd, but have never found making my designs work in IE6 too much of a hassle. There has always been a positive ROI beyond just pleasing the spec-writers.

I think a lot of developers write overly complex, fragile mark-up with lots of nested floats and the like. Keep it simple and you'll realise IE6 support is generally just a few tweaks or at worst a conditional or two.

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#74

Post by mestudent »

ansonparker wrote: post #73

I look after an Australian e-commerce site. About 6.5% of our users are on IE6 (I assume they're mainly office-workers on shitty, out-dated PCs). That is way too big a chunk of revenue to ignore in the name of ideals or standards or what-have-you. But please, feel free to redirect any IE6 visitors to your blog to whatever the latest "IE6 is shit and you're an idiot" single serving site of the moment is. I agree that…

I try to make my websites work in ie6 but with minimal work, I'll let IE6 users use it but it will be a degraded experience and most of my website for normal people actually haven't seen such high IE6 usage as 6.5%.

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#75

Post by w1ntermute »

kingkilr wrote: post #24
w1ntermute wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know why Asia has such a high level of IE6 usage? I don't think it has to do with the computers being old, because IE6 usage is relatively high even in developed places like Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

My understanding is that it is very common in China because people mostly use a browser supplied by their ISP which is a rebranded IE6.

Well, that makes sense for China, but not for Japan, Hong Kong, or Singapore.

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#76

Post by w1ntermute »

veyron wrote: post #26
w1ntermute wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know why Asia has such a high level of IE6 usage? I don't think it has to do with the computers being old, because IE6 usage is relatively high even in developed places like Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

I imagine there are a large number of pirated windows xp copies in china

See http://hackerne.ws/item?id=2830887

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#77

Post by w1ntermute »

bmunro wrote: post #39
w1ntermute wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know why Asia has such a high level of IE6 usage? I don't think it has to do with the computers being old, because IE6 usage is relatively high even in developed places like Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

A major reason in South Korea is that in the late 90s, the government mandated the use of ActiveX for online banking. This was only recently repealed, and the Korean government is now encouraging people to move on. The government mandate encouraged many websites to also use ActiveX. South Korea is probably the only country where ActiveX is still in use. Internet Explorer has a browser share of 90-95% in Korea. IE6 is…

I'm aware of the situation in SK, but what about Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore?

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#78

Post by MisterT123 »

mestudent wrote: post #74
ansonparker wrote: post #73

I look after an Australian e-commerce site. About 6.5% of our users are on IE6 (I assume they're mainly office-workers on shitty, out-dated PCs). That is way too big a chunk of revenue to ignore in the name of ideals or standards or what-have-you. But please, feel free to redirect any IE6 visitors to your blog to whatever the latest "IE6 is shit and you're an idiot" single serving site of the moment is. I agree that…

I try to make my websites work in ie6 but with minimal work, I'll let IE6 users use it but it will be a degraded experience and most of my website for normal people actually haven't seen such high IE6 usage as 6.5%.

Judging by http://www.ie6countdown.com/ IE6 is pretty popular in some parts of the world.

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#79

Post by neild »

pjscott wrote: post #69
derleth wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should stop supporting X browser because some kid doesn't know how to support it too? No, we should look seriously at whether we need to keep doing things the cheap labor can't perform anymore. Supporting IE6 is a Black Art, and keeping people who can perform Black Arts reliably is expensive. I suppose the traditional comparison is to COBOL codebases and greenscreen IBM development. If thinking about that convin…

... and keeping people who can perform Black Arts reliably is expensive. I have nothing to add ("me, too!"), but would like to point out that this sounds like a line from a fantasy novel written by an economist. If such a thing actually exists, I would love to hear of it.

Harald, by David Friedman. (There are a number of notable David Friedmans. This is the anarcho-capitalist-son-of-Milton-Friedman one.)

Harald is quite good, IMO, but there isn't a lot of overt economics so it may not be what you're looking for.

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#80

Post by mlreed328 »

I just worked on a 300K project for a company that makes 6mil/day (yes, you read that right) to redo a single page on their website (albeit a functional page). IE6 was a requirement.

A client with that kind of money dictates what is and is not supported and you don't just get to "not know how to do it".

2% of the U.S. may use IE6... but 99% of the executives in this company used it.

Not to mention that if an IE6 hack took 2 days you got of eeeaaasy... seriously. It only took 2 days? You got of easy.

Yeah, it sucks. But there are cases where learning how to IE6 or otherwise can be quite lucrative- and a condition for doing business.

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