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As far as I can tell there's no reason to get rid of IE6 unless you're going to also eliminate IE 7 and 8. Aside from CSS differences they are largely equivale

by dstein 16y ago

As far as I can tell there's no reason to get rid of IE6 unless you're going to also eliminate IE 7 and 8. Aside from CSS differences they are largely equivalent. Even IE9 doesn't support websockets or even half the HTML5 features of any other modern browser so for a modern web app you still need to drop IE support anyways.

rimantas 16y ago
Aside from CSS differences they are largely equivalent. Sounds like "the biggest pains aside they are largely equivalent".
melling 16y ago
One less browser to tweak and test. If you look at the numbers, IE7 is going away fast. That leaves IE8 and IE9. I think writing for a cross section of IE9, and the more modern browsers (FF,Chrome, Opera), and some specialized code for IE8 where necessary, is a big improvement.
DrJokepu 16y ago
I have to disagree. While IE7 (or IE8 for that matter) is clearly very far from being perfect, it's massively superior to IE6. Not just "CSS differences". I mean IE7 fixed bugs like select elements being always on top or the URL fragment (the #hash part) being submitted to the HTTP server as part of the URL. These issues are major pains in the back. Supporting IE7 is an awful lot easier than supporting IE6.
- dstein 16y ago
  The things you have mentioned are rather trivial in the overall picture and really not a good enough reason to support IE7 but not IE6. The JavaScript engines are nearly identical and the broad set of technologies are the same. For example, I consider not supporting SVG 10 years after standarization a major probleam. And only IE9 addressed that issue.
  - yuhong 16y ago
    And XHTML too.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
markkanof 16y ago
Also, JavaScript performance has improved in the newer versions of IE. I just ran into a situation where some DOM manipulation using jQuery was taking 35 seconds to complete in IE6, but took less than a second in IE8. I ended up spending about four hours coming up with a bunch of optimizations that made it perform acceptably in IE6. I suppose you could argue that optimized code is a good thing, but personally I would have rather have spend that time working on something else.

by dstein 16y ago

rimantas 16y ago

Aside from CSS differences they are largely equivalent. Sounds like "the biggest pains aside they are largely equivalent".

melling 16y ago

One less browser to tweak and test. If you look at the numbers, IE7 is going away fast. That leaves IE8 and IE9. I think writing for a cross section of IE9, and the more modern browsers (FF,Chrome, Opera), and some specialized code for IE8 where necessary, is a big improvement.

DrJokepu 16y ago

I have to disagree. While IE7 (or IE8 for that matter) is clearly very far from being perfect, it's massively superior to IE6. Not just "CSS differences". I mean IE7 fixed bugs like select elements being always on top or the URL fragment (the #hash part) being submitted to the HTTP server as part of the URL. These issues are major pains in the back. Supporting IE7 is an awful lot easier than supporting IE6.

dstein 16y ago
The things you have mentioned are rather trivial in the overall picture and really not a good enough reason to support IE7 but not IE6. The JavaScript engines are nearly identical and the broad set of technologies are the same. For example, I consider not supporting SVG 10 years after standarization a major probleam. And only IE9 addressed that issue.
- yuhong 16y ago
  And XHTML too.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

markkanof 16y ago

Also, JavaScript performance has improved in the newer versions of IE. I just ran into a situation where some DOM manipulation using jQuery was taking 35 seconds to complete in IE6, but took less than a second in IE8. I ended up spending about four hours coming up with a bunch of optimizations that made it perform acceptably in IE6. I suppose you could argue that optimized code is a good thing, but personally I would have rather have spend that time working on something else.