7 ms·

This complaint is as old as the hills. You may as well slap an obnoxious "Designed for HTML5" button on your site. The cost of having the world's largest addres

by seldo 16y ago

This complaint is as old as the hills. You may as well slap an obnoxious "Designed for HTML5" button on your site. The cost of having the world's largest addressable audience of any development platform is that web developers have to deal with the fact that it varies a lot. Them's the breaks. Edit: because I hate comments that are purely negative, my suggestion for getting users to the latest technologies is to use libraries (like YUI and jQuery) which do the hard work of implementing newer features in backwards compatible ways, but use the modern feature if it's available. That way the difference between IE8 and a more recent browser becomes one of performance rather than the binary absence of functionality. Users can that way see what they're missing and have a reason to upgrade that's more compelling than the designer petulantly insisting their browser sucks.

evo_9 16y ago
The thing about all this I don't get is that IE8 is not anywhere near as bad as IE6 was. Like you mentioned, using libraries like YUI, or jQuery really mitigate a lot of the problems. If you also plan a bit up front and have a competent designer to help out with the css definitions and strategizing (like avoiding gradients for now, fun/cool as they be), it's really not that big a deal. I'm working on a new site and I've literally done nothing other than have a designer help out with the CSS and the only difference between Firefox, Safari, Chrome and IE8 are css drop-shadows, and rounded corners. Purely cosmetic, unlike IE6 which if you didn't account for it could stop your app in it's tracks. To me IE8, as much as I would never personally use it, is a huge improvement from IE6. Even over IE7 it's hugely better, easier to deal with.
- Xixi 16y ago
  IE6 was a gigantic improvement over IE5.5, too. The problem is not there, the problem is that people are still stuck with IE6 today, close to ten years later... IE8 seems not so bad today, but without any support for html5, css3, canvas, video or websockets, what will you think 10 years from now ? That it sucks: it will force you to have Flash/Silverlight fallbacks to do something as trivial as plotting a graph or displaying a video. Yet many XP users will still be using it, so you will have to support it...
  - swombat 16y ago
    Considering the pace of browser development, I would say that's true of any browser that doesn't auto-update. Ten years from now, if we still have this bizarre thing called the internet, IE9 will be the dinosaur that everyone hates. Or maybe even IE10.
  - evo_9 16y ago
    MS with IE6 had a cavalier, take-it-or-leave-it approach to features/standards and sought to subvert/control the web/web browser-market. MS with IE8 (an IE9) are actually trying to make their browser standards compliant and while we might not like the pace of the behemoth, it's moving in the right direction and this is a good thing. 2010 is a much different landscape than 2005 as far as the browser market goes as well; MS/IE are no longer the dominant juggernaut that can attempt to dictate standards. More than anything IE releases are tied to MS's OS releases - IE8 has become the largest slice of the IE pie because of Win7, not because of features or any push by MS. As MS increases their release cycle of both browsers and more importantly, OS's, the likelihood of a IE6 repeat with IE8 is extremely thin. MS can't sit around on any version of a major product like they did with both XP and IE6.
- simonw 16y ago
  Yes, it's an improvement. But the killer quote for me is " in 2015, you’ll still be thinking about a browser that doesn’t support <canvas> or <video> and doesn’t even have a JITing JS engine.". I don't care how much better IE8 is than 6 and 7 - that sucks.
tomjen3 16y ago
A better way would be to make the basic functionality work in browsers, then make it pretty and really nice to use for the rest.
simonw 16y ago
Teaching your grandmother to suck eggs? http://infrequently.org/2010/10/hoisted-from-other-peoples-comments/ http://infrequently.org/2010/10/hoisted-from-other-peoples-c...
- seldo 16y ago
  How embarrassing. On the other hand, the only clue that he's one of the authors of dojo is that he links to dojo projects in the sidebar a lot, but he also links to chromium and webkit. Should I assume he's one of the authors of those too? (He could be, I've no idea)
  - simonw 16y ago
    Yes, he's the principle developer of Google Chrome Frame and works on the Chrome team at Google. His most recent post is worth reading, as it expands on his position: http://infrequently.org/2010/10/story-time/ http://infrequently.org/2010/10/story-time/

by seldo 16y ago

evo_9 16y ago

The thing about all this I don't get is that IE8 is not anywhere near as bad as IE6 was. Like you mentioned, using libraries like YUI, or jQuery really mitigate a lot of the problems. If you also plan a bit up front and have a competent designer to help out with the css definitions and strategizing (like avoiding gradients for now, fun/cool as they be), it's really not that big a deal. I'm working on a new site and I've literally done nothing other than have a designer help out with the CSS and the only difference between Firefox, Safari, Chrome and IE8 are css drop-shadows, and rounded corners. Purely cosmetic, unlike IE6 which if you didn't account for it could stop your app in it's tracks. To me IE8, as much as I would never personally use it, is a huge improvement from IE6. Even over IE7 it's hugely better, easier to deal with.

Xixi 16y ago
IE6 was a gigantic improvement over IE5.5, too. The problem is not there, the problem is that people are still stuck with IE6 today, close to ten years later... IE8 seems not so bad today, but without any support for html5, css3, canvas, video or websockets, what will you think 10 years from now ? That it sucks: it will force you to have Flash/Silverlight fallbacks to do something as trivial as plotting a graph or displaying a video. Yet many XP users will still be using it, so you will have to support it...
- swombat 16y ago
  Considering the pace of browser development, I would say that's true of any browser that doesn't auto-update. Ten years from now, if we still have this bizarre thing called the internet, IE9 will be the dinosaur that everyone hates. Or maybe even IE10.
- evo_9 16y ago
  MS with IE6 had a cavalier, take-it-or-leave-it approach to features/standards and sought to subvert/control the web/web browser-market. MS with IE8 (an IE9) are actually trying to make their browser standards compliant and while we might not like the pace of the behemoth, it's moving in the right direction and this is a good thing. 2010 is a much different landscape than 2005 as far as the browser market goes as well; MS/IE are no longer the dominant juggernaut that can attempt to dictate standards. More than anything IE releases are tied to MS's OS releases - IE8 has become the largest slice of the IE pie because of Win7, not because of features or any push by MS. As MS increases their release cycle of both browsers and more importantly, OS's, the likelihood of a IE6 repeat with IE8 is extremely thin. MS can't sit around on any version of a major product like they did with both XP and IE6.
simonw 16y ago
Yes, it's an improvement. But the killer quote for me is " in 2015, you’ll still be thinking about a browser that doesn’t support <canvas> or <video> and doesn’t even have a JITing JS engine.". I don't care how much better IE8 is than 6 and 7 - that sucks.

tomjen3 16y ago

A better way would be to make the basic functionality work in browsers, then make it pretty and really nice to use for the rest.

simonw 16y ago

Teaching your grandmother to suck eggs? http://infrequently.org/2010/10/hoisted-from-other-peoples-comments/ http://infrequently.org/2010/10/hoisted-from-other-peoples-c...

seldo 16y ago
How embarrassing. On the other hand, the only clue that he's one of the authors of dojo is that he links to dojo projects in the sidebar a lot, but he also links to chromium and webkit. Should I assume he's one of the authors of those too? (He could be, I've no idea)
- simonw 16y ago
  Yes, he's the principle developer of Google Chrome Frame and works on the Chrome team at Google. His most recent post is worth reading, as it expands on his position: http://infrequently.org/2010/10/story-time/ http://infrequently.org/2010/10/story-time/