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Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

bartvanzon.com

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Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#91

Post by ricardobeat »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #83
axefrog wrote: post #3

I honestly think a lot of hacker types really do live in a bubble where they think it's still 2000, Microsoft is still the same evil company they were, Apple still can do no wrong, most people now use Macs "if they know what's good for them", RoR, node.js and Python are really the only valid technologies for back end development and so forth. Certainly plenty of folks out there using the aforementioned technologies a…

I feel like people are lying to the,selves about IE9. It's still not good enough! The key words you used were that hard implying you know it's still just a little tough. Ever try to get a gradient to work in IE9? First off, when it works it doesn't render anything like it renders in any other browser, and second, you still have to jump through hoops or all your gradients will be blue even if they're not meant to be b…

Nobody is saying IE9 is great, but you can't deny it's good enough for most apps. It's fast, has a decent javascript engine, a hardware-accelerated canvas, some HTML5 support. Their greatest sin was leaving out text-shadow and gradients, but IE10 is just around the corner.

Even if it was complete crap, it has a 30-50% share, you can't justify killing off that much business unless you develop a Mac/Linux-centric or browser-specific app/site.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#92

Post by masklinn »

axefrog wrote: post #19
givan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the IE 6 pain no web developer will forgive microsoft for the time lost and pain. They test for IE only because lots of people use it or because their jobs require this, nobody likes IE, it always had bugs, was insecure and most important non standard. IE9 is closer to normal, but microsoft lost is trust, they had the chance to change something much earlier and they did nothing, they are only acting now because…

Oh come on. Microsoft is not some horrible uncle who did you a great wrong and needs "forgiving". It's a company. The people who work there come and go, change departments and so forth. Yeah, sure, the people who worked in the highest positions back in the day employed some shitty tactics way back when, but times have changed, many of those people have moved on and much of the company's outlook has shifted significan…

> Oh come on. Microsoft is not some horrible uncle who did you a great wrong and needs "forgiving". It's a company.

> Holding an emotional grudge against a transient, evolving collective is stupid.

It might be stupid, but it's also human and it's precisely what has happened.

> Get over it.

Amount of helpfulness: none, givan is explaining the issue regardless of whether it concerns him personally, and denial is pointless. Humans are emotional first and foremost, and when they've spent years in pain (extra stress, work and money lost) due to one specific entity (person, vendor or other) they will not easily forget and forgive. That's how people work. Microsoft made their bed, and they have to lie in it whether you find that logical or not.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#94

Post by pudakai »

First, I tend to agree that the Microsoft bashing is a little overdone. They've been moving forward legacy code for a product that now is by far the oldest browser in the field while at the same time having to support an obviously enormous user base.

They've made their cost vs. timeliness vs. goodness decisions as is their right to do so.

We make the same decisions about IE compatibility work. Being a very early stage startup, we figure two things:

1) The field of IE users has a lower percentage (and perhaps absolute number) of potential early adopters. For our app, this is a dead certainty, although it is not necessarily so for other apps.

2) IE users, who aren't constantly comparing how a site looks in IE against how it looks in other browsers, are accustomed to things being a little off from time to time. This is their IE world.

So our acceptance level at this stage is does everything work and does it look basically ok in IE. We don't sweat a lot of the finer stuff, again, figuring most of the the IE users are in a world where things are off by a few pixels here and there and don't get too upset by it.

If they did, they'd be on the other browsers, where the sun shines a little brighter and the birds sing a little sweeter for all websites.

That is the important point to remember - browser type users are self-selecting in their tolerance for UX hiccups.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#95

Post by grabastic »

white_devil wrote: post #76
ivanbernat wrote: post #15

It's time we separate "full-stack" developers from "front-end" and "back-end" guys / gals. I've met some brilliant folks who write amazing Ruby but say they hate CSS or JS. Those are "back-end" guys. A "front-end" person will write CSS and HTML markup without a problem and will always make sure it's cross-browser compatible. I've been coding front-end markup for 7 years now and I've never come across a IE-specific is…

> I've never come across a IE-specific issue that took longer than 5 minutes to resolve, and 99% of the time my markup worked without any "hacks" at all. Now that's a flat-out lie right there.

Or it's the truth and his ~450 projects have been of low to medium css/js complexity.

Or even high complexity and he got really, really, really lucky.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#96

Post by rickmb »

axefrog wrote: post #3

I honestly think a lot of hacker types really do live in a bubble where they think it's still 2000, Microsoft is still the same evil company they were, Apple still can do no wrong, most people now use Macs "if they know what's good for them", RoR, node.js and Python are really the only valid technologies for back end development and so forth. Certainly plenty of folks out there using the aforementioned technologies a…

I tried to encourage my team to test better against IE by creating a nice setup on which they could easily use all relevant IE versions.

After two days of struggling with all the insanity of Windows licensing, installing and the crap support for running older / multiple versions of IE I've seen more than enough of Microsoft for the next five years.

Nothing has changed since 2000. Just setting up the tools for supporting IE is nightmare.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#97

Post by jopt »

ricardobeat wrote: post #91
billpatrianakos wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like people are lying to the,selves about IE9. It's still not good enough! The key words you used were that hard implying you know it's still just a little tough. Ever try to get a gradient to work in IE9? First off, when it works it doesn't render anything like it renders in any other browser, and second, you still have to jump through hoops or all your gradients will be blue even if they're not meant to be b…

Nobody is saying IE9 is great, but you can't deny it's good enough for most apps. It's fast, has a decent javascript engine, a hardware-accelerated canvas, some HTML5 support. Their greatest sin was leaving out text-shadow and gradients, but IE10 is just around the corner. Even if it was complete crap, it has a 30-50% share, you can't justify killing off that much business unless you develop a Mac/Linux-centric or br…

Be careful with market share numbers. If you use the generic market share, your implicitly assuming your user base is representative of the general online population. That's rarely the case, and it usually worth using more specific statistics even if your app isn't "Mac-centric."

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#98

Post by secoif »

bartj3 wrote: post #43
stutter wrote: post #31

You don't have comments on your blog, so I'll comment here: IE testing is "hard" on a Mac because of the vm requirement, yes. However, that's not even my main issue. If Microsoft facilitated having VMs of each windows installation + browser version available for that OS to developers, it'd still be "hard" but at least they'd be helping. IE only runs on Windows, so if you want to test for Windows you have a bunch of s…

I'm not a html/css frontend developer so I don't need to test on IE too often, however, when I do I use Virtualbox with some different windows installations. Works like a charm. I have no experience with the development tools in IE8+ (I've been a Mac user for a while now), but I've been told they're pretty descent. I completely agree though, debugging in the older IE's is hell... But the thing is, the user couldn't c…

RE: comments on blog: Use disqus. Drop an html tag and a script tag on your page and you're pretty much done. http://www.disqus.com/

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#99

Post by huggyface »

nirvdrum wrote: post #32
givan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the IE 6 pain no web developer will forgive microsoft for the time lost and pain. They test for IE only because lots of people use it or because their jobs require this, nobody likes IE, it always had bugs, was insecure and most important non standard. IE9 is closer to normal, but microsoft lost is trust, they had the chance to change something much earlier and they did nothing, they are only acting now because…

I think your history is a little skewed. When IE6 came out, it was an awesome browser for the time. It was light years better than anything else out there and yes, it embraced/extended HTML & CSS, but really, no other browser out there supported the specs either. They were the de facto standard so it wasn't even a problem. The reason IE 6 is such a problem is Microsoft didn't do anything with IE for years after that…

When IE6 came out, it was an awesome browser for the time.

IE 4.0 was an awesome browser for the time. In fact it was such an awesome browser, and had so little friction to use, that it largely killed the browser market.

IE 5.0 and 6.0 were minimal effort, piecemeal, close to zero improvement iterations.

Microsoft deserves every bit of disdain that they get. Even still if there are ever movements afoot to try to move the web forward, Microsoft will always resist. People can herald IE 10 for finally incorporating a lot of long overdue functionality, but Microsoft does it only because they have little choice beyond abandoning the market.

Windows Phone 7 demonstrates Microsoft's commitment to the web -- the browser is relative junk. It is quite literally years behind competitors.

Re: Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

#100

Post by chris_wot »

untog wrote: post #87
chris_wot wrote: post #60

Interesting. I created a javascript module that emulates an ActiveX control. It needs to parse binary data sent from the web server. I actually got it working in Opera, Firefox, Chrome and Safari via JDataView, which parses the binary data via a string. However, it doesn't work in Internet Explorer because IE will not read past a zero byte (null character). The data is actually there, you can see it in the debugger,…

Holy edge case, batman! I get what you're saying, but no-one in this discussion is trying to emulate ActiveX controls, just make a web site. And recent versions of IE really aren't that bad for it.

Actually, that was my use case. Quite a few people are using jdataview for other interesting applications. I was merely explaining what I was trying to do, sure it's an edge case but it's actually an example of where Microsoft don't follow the ECMA standard.

Not sure why the post was voted down. I think the fact that Microsoft aren't following the ECMA standard for string processing is actually a fairly egregious example of why it's just not worthwhile in many instances to develop for IE.

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