18 ms·

Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IE

267 points by cleverjake 14y ago

brlewis 14y ago
This may be schadenfreude, but as someone who's been around the web a long time, it really tickles me to see Microsoft have to fake their user agent string to get around an arbitrary browser restriction. Other browsers used to fake the IE user agent string. I suppose it's full circle since IE originally had to pose as Netscape's browser (Mozilla compatible).
- jpadvo 14y ago
  Same circumstance in both cases, though: _developers_, not browser vendors, unnecessarily restricting functionality based on browser sniffing.
  - awj 14y ago
    Oh, it gets weirder than that. Much[1], much weirder. [1] http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/ http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
  - mistercow 14y ago
    No, MS doesn't get to dodge blame that easily. They blatantly used non-standard features in their browser to stifle competition. Many developers were complicit in this but that was according to Microsoft's design.
    - gaius 14y ago
      Non standard features like... XMLHttpRequest? The entire AJAX industry, they invented. What were you saying again?
      - rpeden 14y ago
        Seems to me there has, for a long time, been a double standard when MS is involved. The response I often see is: Something non-standard but cool in IE? "Screw MS, they're trying to embrace and extend the web!" Something non-standard but cool in another browser? "I don't understand why people are complaining! Good ideas like these eventually become standards, and this is how innovation happens!"
        mistercow 14y ago
        There is no double standard. If any single browser had the marketshare that IE had in its heyday, it would be irresponsible and anticompetitive for them to implement nonstandard features. But marketshare is spread much more evenly among the players today, so it's pretty much understood that a production site cannot rely on a browser-specific feature. Hell, most people don't even rely on modern standard features because they still want their stuff to work in IE6. Comparing experimental features today with the IE-flavored-web of 2002 is comparing apples to geese.
        biot 14y ago
        You might have a fair point regarding things like ActiveX which only work on Microsoft's own platform and serve to further lock-in to Windows. However, as was pointed out above, XMLHttpRequest is one such nonstandard feature that Microsoft introduced. How is that feature irresponsible and anticompetitive?
        mistercow 14y ago
        The feature is anticompetitive because it was part of a large-scale and well-documented effort within the company to coopt and/or destroy technologies not controlled by themselves. A handful of innovations (which would have happened anyway) that happened along the way do not justify that kind of behavior.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
- irahul 14y ago
  The arbitrary restriction(not browsers; explicitly placed by the developers) is there to ensure people don't see a broken version. I don't know about the recent IE versions, but earlier versions needed won't center align when I say `margin: 0 auto`(have to do a text-align: center then reset it in child container), have a different boxing model, doesn't support min-height, won't support hover on all elements etc etc. Rather than being bothered with placing conditional rules for non-compliant behavior, I would block IE if I can(i.e if a very small number of users are on IE). I don't know if the current IE behaves as expected, but even if it does, the users who aren't running upgraded IE are going to get a broken version and guess who they are going to think is an idiot(HINT: not IE). My company's site opens up all skewed up on IE because IE won't center the container when I say `margin: 0 auto`. If it were something I was trying to sell, my first instinct would be to check the IE demographics and depending on the numbers, either show a notice regarding using latest version of IE or other standard compliant browser(my preferred scenario), or invest a lot of time to fix it(shivers).
  - brlewis 14y ago
    If I were interested in buying something from your web site, I would be less likely to bounce somewhere else as a result of seeing an uncentered container than I would as a result of being told to upgrade my browser. P.S. Browser restritions are placed by developers, speed restrictions by police, and height restrictions by amusement ride operators. It's not the browser, the speed, or the height that's doing the restricting.
    - irahul 14y ago
      > If I were interested in buying something from your web site, I would be less likely to bounce somewhere else as a result of seeing an uncentered container than I would as a result of being told to upgrade my browser. Depending on the demographics(what do I lose if I don't support outdated IE and how likely is my customer base to be running arcane IE), the amount of effort required to make sure my site runs on arcane IE; your bouncing off somewhere else might not matter to me. I didn't say putting up a notice saying use a modern browser will ensure customers will comply - I am saying that might be a reasonable compromise.
- 5teev 14y ago
  Even using Mac IE5 (the best browser for Macs in its time) I sometimes had to fake the user agent to use some sites. So I also felt a little twinge of schadenfreude on reading this.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- rbanffy 14y ago
  AFAIK, Internet Explorer 10 user agent string starts with "Mozilla" ;-)
  - jayferd 14y ago
    Most user-agent strings start with "Mozilla". It's a quirk from the very weird history of the user-agent string. http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/ http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
    - rbanffy 14y ago
      That doesn't change the fact IE started its life by pretending to be Netscape.
  - josephcooney 14y ago
    Welcome to the internet.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
dpearson 14y ago
The problem is, IE 9 and 10 are not everywhere. I know for certain that my school (and, I'd be willing to wager, many businesses) only deploys IE 7 and 8. IE 6 still isn't dead, despite Microsoft publicly encouraging migration. Until Microsoft gets IE 9 and 10 adoption up, supporting Internet Explorer is tricky.
- josefresco 14y ago
  The problem really is that they are lumping ALL IE users into one "incompatible bucket" irregardless of the version and features supported. There's no need to get religious here, just support the browsers that have the features your web app needs.
  - politician 14y ago
    You're talking about feature testing and progressive enhancement. Adopting that strategy doesn't mean that you no longer have to test every browser, it just means that you don't support a common level of functionality across browsers. Indeed, you'll still end up testing all the browsers all of the time, just with different expectations. These guys have been burned by IE to the point where they don't want to test it period. Feature testing doesn't get them there, but blacklisting does.
    - eropple 14y ago
      > These guys have been burned by IE to the point where they don't want to test it period. Alternate Character Interpretation: they want some hits from HN because "look at us, we don't support IE!!!".
  - rhizome 14y ago
    Suffice it to say that Microsoft has a lot to answer for in this department.
- mariusmg 14y ago
  Irrelevant. Is not like that site works perfectly on initial release of chrome
amishforkfight 14y ago
Just a guess, but the inclusion of -ms prefixes indicate the use of a CSS preprocessor and some off-the-shelf mixin libraries for all the fancy crap.
- reybango 14y ago
  Possibly. Just seems odd that specific things are added but others aren't.
moron 14y ago
The site happening to work is not the same thing as support. Trust me.
- chc 14y ago
  That is quite true, but ultimately irrelevant to the article's point, which is that they are seemingly locking users out just for the heck of it.
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    Probably not just for the heck of it. The press might have factored in.
  - moron 14y ago
    No, it's not irrelevant. Someday the site will change in a way such that it no longer happens to work in IE. But since they don't support IE, it won't be a bug. Support is a commitment to people, not a mere technical hurdle.
    - lmm 14y ago
      Not supporting it is fine. User agent sniffing is obnoxious.
    - chc 14y ago
      Maybe. I wouldn't really bet on the site becoming completely unusable in IE, but I suppose it's a remote possibility. Let's be generous to your argument and call it a 25% chance. At any rate, you're right that it would be irresponsible to say they support IE if they aren't willing to fix it in such a case. But because there's a 25% chance that the site could break sometime in the future, they go out of their way to break it right now? That's what they're talking about, and it's orthogonal to the idea of choosing what configurations to support. At the company where I work, we don't support people trying to eat the newspapers we put out, but we don't go out of our way to make the newspapers poisonous either.
- sk3tch 14y ago
heelhook 14y ago
tl;dr the site works with IE9 and IE10. I find the style of writing of this post extremely obnoxious, was it really necessary to say the exact same thing with slightly different order in the words over and over? If your post is to be short because there's not a lot to say, don't extend it unnecessarily, get to the point, move on.
- davidjgraph 14y ago
  I thought that. Plus the commenter that tries to explain that Microsoft built up a good deal of "trust debt" over the IE 6-8 period for those who had to code through it, gets the same repeated in the comments. It's all very well that it technically might work, but we're dealing with humans here, humans that have been annoyed for a long time...
  - dmix 14y ago
    Microsofts trust debt will start repairing when noone uses IE7 anymore. It's still at about 10% worldwide so many of use still have to fix mystery JS bugs in IE7 and even still some CSS oddities in IE8.
    - Joeri 14y ago
      Not to mention the joy of "can't execute code from a freed script" in IE9 (code that works fine in every other browser, even IE6, magically broke in IE9).
- cooldeal 14y ago
  I guess that the writer is (understandably) pissed, especially at Paydirt using a torn IE icon image on their browser denial page. https://paydirtapp.com/assets/ie_broken-7502950b14013927bbde4c0416f7a515.png https://paydirtapp.com/assets/ie_broken-7502950b14013927bbde... You would be pissed too, if someone claimed your product that you worked hard on to work well is publicly called out to be broken when it is not and dropping support for it a user feature(indirectly suggesting others should do it too).
- philjohn 14y ago
FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
So, if Microsoft renamed IE10 to something entirely different, and packaged it as a standalone browser, would a site like Paydirt support it then? It seems to work fine, so why not? This, and comments like "The site happening to work" seem to have an underlying prejudice about IE. "It was IE, so it must be fucked some way or another." The old versions are, but try running the site on Chrome 1, or Firefox 3.6 (I believe a lot of old Ubuntu LTS releases have that). They'll be exactly the same. This should not become a trend.
- moron 14y ago
  > This, and comments like "The site happening to work" seem to have an underlying prejudice about IE. "It was IE, so it must be fucked some way or another." If it's my comment you're referring to, I said it "happens" to work in IE because if we are to believe the team, they didn't try to make it work in IE. It just does, by coincidence, for now. Support is a commitment, and committing to IE will mean work down the road that these people have decided not to do, because it is not valuable to them. This attitude of "Oh, it works in IE right now so they must just be pedantic asses" is short-sighted.
  - mikeryan 14y ago
    It just does, by coincidence, for now So you're saying its just a fluke that IE9+ supports the same standards as Firefox and Chrome? Amazing luck that.
    - rhizome 14y ago
      Historically speaking, yes, but perhaps intentional in the present day. Who's to say, and better yet, who's going to spend scarce developer resources on proving it one way or the other? Unless you're doing corporate, that is.
      - qw 14y ago
        who's going to spend scarce developer resources on proving it This was the argument many had a decade ago about IE6. Lots of people designed for IE6 first and didn't spend time on alternative browsers. They were lucky that IE6 continued to be popular for so many years, but in the end it has caused a lot of problems. These days the markets move a lot quicker, so failing to support IE9 today may prove an expensive decision in a year or two.
janlukacs 14y ago
it's just a publicity stunt to get traffic to their site. since web devs mostly hate IE it an easy way to get their attention...
- vph 14y ago
  That is a bingo!
- cooldeal 14y ago
  Worked quite well on HN.
- gm 14y ago
  Well may have gotten traffic but did it get sales? Goodwill? Attracting traffic because you are being a dick is not the same as attracting traffic because you are making a world-changing awesome product.
sauravc 14y ago
IE may be annoying, and I certainly sympathize with the Paydirt crew. But this author makes a good point: "it’s exactly this type of behavior (writing for or against specific browsers) that sets the Web back again." Sometimes doing the right thing isn't the easiest path forward.
- rhizome 14y ago
  The unspoken assertion in that point? The only basis for including "again" is the past work of the IE team themselves.
  - sauravc 14y ago
    Yup. But two wrongs don't make a right.
tnorthcutt 14y ago
They were using many CSS3 features supported since IE9, like transforms & border-radius, but just not adding the –ms vendor prefix entry They had the “-ms” prefix for CSS3 gradients which was added in IE10 They added support for -khtml-box-shadow but not -ms-box-shadow??? They didn’t support Opera either unfortunately All this crap recently about web standards and Opera adopting the webkit prefix and how bad some people think that is for the web? Paydirt, and people who think like them, are a huge part of the problem. Please don't do stuff like this.
- arkitaip 14y ago
  Do their customers care? Does it affect their bottom line?
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  I use Opera as my main browser and I cringe when clicking on a link in HN which supposedly shows off usage of cool new features in HTML/CSS/JS/WebGL whatever. Then I hunt around the site which breaks on me with no message. Then have to trawl through the HN comments to realize that it only works in Chrome and no one bothers to put that in the headline or on the site. Note that this happens to lots of Google cool features or easter eggs. Is this really taking the web forward or setting it back to the "best works in IE" days (just without that helpful message) ? And now Opera is pissed at the usage of browser specific extensions and is adding support for -moz and -webkit which is sure to further mess up things.
  - Zirro 14y ago
    "And now Opera is pissed at the usage of browser specific extensions and is adding support for -moz and -webkit which is sure to further mess up things." I know Mozilla has been discussing this as well, to have a chance to compete in mobile. Do you have a link to Opera's statement about it?
    - recoiledsnake 14y ago
      Here: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-mobile-emulator-experimental-webkit-prefix-support/ http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-mobile-emulator-exp...
pippy 14y ago
Supporting IE has nothing to do with how well it renders a site. Supporting IE carries massive baggage as you have to pin yourself to Microsoft's erratic, tactic based release cycles and limiting yourself with future features. Chrome and Firefox now how have rolling releases and are closely tied with the developer community, so new features and rendering uniformity is what you gain. There's also the ethos you buy into by supporting IE: you're supporting a closed source, proprietary internet.
- PaulHoule 14y ago
  IE's moving to a similar "rapid release" schedule with other browsers. Microsoft has played many sneaky pete tricks in the browser wars (such as supporting a CSS standard that couldn't be correctly implemented in Netscape's codebase) but you can't blame their release schedule entirely on that -- Windows users tend to be a conservative lot who are terrified that Microsoft will push something that will break their cheap-ass intranet that's held together with string and ear wax.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    conservative lot who are terrified that Microsoft will push something that will break their cheap-ass intranet Due to...everybody say it with me...lack of standards support.
    - bzbarsky 14y ago
      No, it's due to so many intranet applications being written as one-browser hacks completely ignoring standards. Mozilla has had similar issues with intranets (though not to as large an extent, due to their smaller install base), and you can't exactly blame _that_ on lack of standards support. What you _can_ blame it on is things like people writing intranet apps that depend on the user flipping some hidden pref in the browser to relax a security policy and then breaking when that pref is later removed, say.
    - FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
      Funnily enough, we had a similar problem at one of my previous employers with Firefox 3.6. If an institution sticks doggedly to one version of one browser, then it stands to reason any intranet software is going to be optimised for nothing other than that.
rbanffy 14y ago
I can see why someone would do it. If you are on Windows, you _can_ use other browsers - every browser is available on Windows. When I allow an IE user to use an application, I have to start testing on IE. In order to do that I'll have to make Selenium do some extra runs (IE 7, 8, 9, 10, Metro mode) under a Windows VM. I also need at least one (Win 7) Windows licenses (probably more, but I may be able to get away with permanently using it in preview) and, worst of all, when it breaks, I'll have to get the application fixed for, at least a couple versions of Firefox, Chrome and IE. And that if it breaks during testing - if it breaks with a user I'll have to start guessing what went wrong (if something did). Nah... Windows users can use Safari, Chrome or Firefox. edit: as pointed out by recoiledsnake, aaronbrethorst and Impossible Safari is available for Windows.
- Impossible 14y ago
  Safari is available for Windows and has been for years.
- aaronbrethorst 14y ago
  Safari is available for Windows: System Requirements: Any PC running Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista or Windows 7 http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1070?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1070?viewlocale=en_US&loca...
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  Safari is available on Windows. Anyways, the author's beef was not that IE should be supported at any cost, but the claim that the features needed are not supported in IE and that's why it needs to be banished by User Agent(complete with a broken IE icon display).
- darklajid 14y ago
  I'm a Firefox user, working exclusively on Windows (although a Linux nut by night). If a site blocks any browser by user-agent _and I find out about that_ (as a user of FF that's not a regular case) that site is dead. I will create some childish rhymes about the creator of that thing, I'm going to compare it to acoustic couplers or pay phones and .. move on. There are good reasons to avoid supporting every browser and the IE brand _had_ (and has) problems. But user agent sniffing? That results in one reaction only (again, of course, limited to 'what I can notice'): This business isn't able to provide a usable web presence. I'm going elsewhere.
eagsalazar 14y ago
Doesn't anyone realize they just wrote that article and disabled ie9 to attract hipster freelance designers and developers? The whole thing is basically a PR stunt since they realized 99% of their hits were from Mac anyway. Especially having their article on Hacker News was just to get attention from the large freelancer following on HN. I'm no fan of IE. However explicitly blocking IE9 is just idiotic for any other reason. They could, at worst, just have a subtle notice letting people know it is optimized for Chrome/FF and their mileage may otherwise vary. However, for the reason of getting Mac using hipsters excited, it was pretty brilliant. (btw, I'm not a Mac or Windows user) Disclaimers: (1) This is just a theory. (2) I actually like hipsters. I just recognize they can sometimes be manipulated. Like everyone, they have their buttons.
- rickmb 14y ago
  From the way you throw the word "hipster" around like an epithet, I already guessed you are not a Mac or Windows user... Sorry, couldn't resist. My point is, making all those assumptions about people and their motives is just as "idiotic" as blocking IE9 in the first place.
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    The veracity of those assumptions has little to do with whether or not Paydirt shared that thought process.
aneth 14y ago
What does it mean to "not support" a browser? Does it mean you know your site is broken in the browser? Does it mean you block that browser? Does it mean you intentionally broke your site in that browser? None of the above. It means you don't want to waste your QA time testing and fixing minor quirks in the browser and you don't want your users having a degraded experience on that browser. To protect your users, you may or may not provide a warning or block the browser entirely. Products are in constant development, and every CSS change or javascript feature has the potential to break a browser and require fixes. Just because it works now, doesn't mean it always will. It appears they successfully attempted to support IE, but decided it was not worth continuing, perhaps because of some breakage OP did not discover. Should they have stripped out any IE supporting code? That seems unnecessary.
- wheelerwj 14y ago
  It seems unnecessary to straight up block potential customers from signing up because of their browser. Encourage them to get the full experience using another browser might be a better idea.
  - politician 14y ago
    Suppose you are the proprietor of a physical retail business. You're the only employee, so on Sundays you close the shop because otherwise you'd be short-staffed. Do you listen to potential customers who complain that you're not open on Sundays by (a) offering them a degraded experience by letting them shop while you aren't there, (b) hire additional staff to support the shop on Sundays, or (c) tell them to come back during normal business hours? If the amount of revenue you'd make by expanding the number of hours the store is open per week is less than the costs of supporting the additional staff, you ought to pick (c); otherwise, pick (b). It's bloody irrational to pick (a). Yet, in your post you advocate (a). Why?
    - recoiledsnake 14y ago
      Did you mean to post this comment to the previous article and not this one? The article shows that the site works in IE9 and IE10. Not to mention that the author not only chose (c) but also posted the equivalent of saying closing the shop on Sundays is a feature because Sundays suck for shopping(which is obviously wrong) and basically advised other sites to do the same.
jayferd 14y ago
If I, as a developer, decide my site supports a browser, I know I'm going to have to spend some time doing QA on that browser. Standards are cool, but I've run into enough FF and Chrome bugs that I always test. That being said, the cost of testing in IE is waaay higher than the cost of testing in FF and Chrome. Why? Because FF and Chrome are cross-platform, I and my fellow developers can test on our OS of choice. With IE, a testing environment costs my company about $300 per developer. Not to mention that setting up a VM for testing is the opposite of straightforward. After shaving a few yaks to convert the stupid VHD format to something VirtualBox can understand, you need to hack your local network so the VM can see its host. Also, the developer tools are crappy. Has anyone worked on those in the last 10 years? I use Chrome for development not because of "web standards", but because the debugging tools are awesome (some people swear by Firebug, also, YMMV). So I guess the point "support" is a little more complicated than "look, it works!".
- FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
  ievms[1] aims to make testing IE on a non-Windows box less complicated (it depends on VirtualBox). [1] https://github.com/xdissent/ievms https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
  - jayferd 14y ago
    That sounds useful. This gets me though: > The VMs provided by Microsoft will not pass the Windows Genuine Advantage and cannot be activated. I mean, there's a workaround, but where's the love from Microsoft? Don't they want me to be able to test on their browser so my sites will support it?
    - tensor 14y ago
      This is really not a big problem. A non-activated version of windows will run for a while before rebooting. It's mildly annoying to have to reboot every now and then in extended testing, but it works sufficiently well. Microsoft's suggested solution is to just start from the raw image each time you start the vm. This way it will run without problems for 30 days. The images come pre-setup so you don't need setup time unless you want to install some extra debugging tools.
dutchbrit 14y ago
Claiming they no longer support IE means they'll stop writing "hacks" for IE from now (not as in last month) onwards.. But still, silly that they simply block IE and don't just show an extra message saying use X for the "ultimate experience". Maybe they should only block IE once they have an update that really will interfere with IE users. But on the other hand, that might piss of paying customers that actually use IE and refuse/aren't allowed to use anything else..
yuhong 14y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3942003 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3942003
billpatrianakos 14y ago
It's easy to say IE9+ works but in the real world people aren't upgrading their version of IE like users of other browsers tend to do. While IE9 and above are much better than their predecessors by a long shot they still require you to jump through more hoops compared to any other browser. IE9 supports gradients but you have to feed it so,e conditional CSS for it to work as expected. Overall it's misleading to say "IE9 and above work just fine you elitist hipsters" when we all know damn well there are still so many users on versions of IE older than 9 because XP won't let you or simply because Mocrosoft has traditionally not really encouraged or made it as easy to upgrade. To their credit I'm glad they're running commercials for IE10 and for this case, considering PayDirt's audience, it could be fair to criticize them for leaving all IE users out because we can reasonably assume they're using the latest greatest even if it is IE. But if you want to talk about IE being no problem to support in general then it's disingenuous to only mention the two latest versions because we know there are far too many users of the older ones to ignore. Users of other browsers are upgrading regularly so it's trivial to support old FF or Chrome (plus even FF's and Chromes's older versions support a hell of a lot more than comparable older IE's). You know why we love to hate IE even when it improves? Because it feels like too little too late. Even the improvements are one step behind everyone else.
- MicroAndMacro 14y ago
  Bill. Just wanted to let you know that Microsoft has been auto-updating all users that have opted into MS updates on their Windows machines since January. A majority of XP users should now be on IE8, all other Windows machines should have IE9. http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/microsoft-decides-to-automatically-update-internet-explorer-for-everyone-20111215/ http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/microsoft-decides-to-...
- rwallace 14y ago
  Be that as it may, it remains the case that the right solution is "we don't support older versions of IE" (unless the client is willing to pay extra for that of course), not "we don't support IE at all". In the real world, you get much better reactions from telling people "we don't support the old versions, you need to upgrade" than from "we're on a crusade against your platform in its entirety". This remains true _whether or not_ the people in question are willing to upgrade just yet.
kadjar 14y ago
Did anyone else notice that font smoothing was significantly better in the Win7 screenshots than Win8?
ilaksh 14y ago
IE9 may have caught up on some things, but there are a lot of things it doesn't do, that Safari/Chrome and Firefox (as well as Opera in most cases) do do. So even if it might not be quite as hard now to get it to layout properly (it still is not the same as Chrome/Safari/Firefox/Opera, really, things just don't behave the same unless you train yourself to avoid things that IE9 doesn't like), there are lots of other reasons to avoid IE: ■ WebGL (3D) ■ WebSockets ■ HTML5 Forms (validation mechanism, CSS3 selectors) ■ FormData ■ HTML5 multifile-upload ■ HTML5 video (only with certain file formats) ■ CSS3 Transitions (for animations) ■ CSS3 Text Shadow ■ CSS3 Gradients ■ CSS3 Border Image ■ CSS3 Flex box model ■ Application Cache (offline) ■ Web Workers (threads in JavaScript) ■ Drag’n Drop from Desktop ■ SMIL Animations (SVG animations) ■ File API ■ JavaScript Strict Mode ■ ForeignObject (embed external content in SVG) ■ ClassList APIs ■ HTML5 History API Why are most of these features either already implemented in other browsers or available in development versions, but completely missing from Internet Explorer? Why haven't more of these features made it into the hands of Windows users? Its not because Microsoft can't figure out how to implement or deploy these features. Its because the web platform is fundamentally antagonistic to Microsoft's business model with its dominant Windows monopoly on business software, PC games and operating system deployment. Those features which enhance the web browser to make it most competitive with the desktop MUST not be deployed to Windows users any faster than absolutely necessary. It is an absolute business imperative for Microsoft to drag its feet and disrupt the web platform as much as it possibly can, because when all web browsers have web workers, 3D WebGL, WebSockets, File API, Gradients, Drag and Drop, HTML5 forms etc., it simply won't make business sense to write applications specific to Microsoft's platform. Pretty soon after that happens, it won't make sense to continue the Windows and Office licensing lock-in. So the relationship between a web developer (who understands the nature of the web platform) and Microsoft is fundamentally antagonistic.
- mattmanser 14y ago
  Oh god, we might as well start asking why FF didn't support ellipse for what seems like decades. Everyone has different release schedules. IE is a lot more conservative because they support enterprise who are mighty touchy. Grow The Fuck Up Cry Baby. I'm all for IE6 and IE7 whining, they suck. I'm even for IE8 and the entire stop at XP whining. Damn MS for that. But you just sound like a total privileged prat who doesn't have a clue what's going on when it comes to web standards. FF and Chrome have a lot more latitude. If you want to know what happens when stuff starts moving too fast keep an eye on the webkit mobile css support fiasco unfolding in front of us right now. There is such a thing as moving too fast.
andrew_wc_brown 14y ago
In my current project, I've decided only to support the chrome browser and all other user agents are redirected to a not supported page asking them to install chrome. I dont see the point in sacrificing my programmer happiness.
LocalPCGuy 14y ago
IMO, I agree with those that say it is a publicity stunt. It costs very little to support IE9+. Even IE8 doesn't take a ton of time to make it work, although you do have to do something about the CSS3 styles (CSS3PIE, for example.) But it is really dumb to make the choice to BLOCK a browser by user agent. How about feature detection or if you must block by browser, at least do IE8 and below. Note, I am a front-end dev, and I know the pain of developing for IE6 and IE7. But any front end dev with any professional skills can make a site that works in IE8+ without resorting to ugly hacks (I don't call polyfills hacks.) And IE9 supports a large percentage of the standards we use on a daily basis. Sorry, dumb move by Paydirt, with no monetary payoff.
JVIDEL 14y ago
When I meet with investors all they talk about is traction and traffic. If you have enough there are no more meeting, no calls, no demos. You get funded, no questions asked. IE is no longer 90% of the market, but it's still the biggest browser by market share. There are many early adopters, but not anywhere as much as regular users. Regular users make the bulk of any popular site/webapp's traction, and most of them use IE, period. A few years from now when IE becomes just another competitor and not the market leader we wont need to develop for it, and that might actually make more regular users move to FF or Chrome. Meanwhile you have to support it, because IE development will never ever be as difficult as getting enough traction.
HaloZero 14y ago
Paydirt is within it's full rights not to support IE9 when it's customer base doesn't really use it. The problem is that the author notices most things work (border radius) but doesn't realize that IE9 is missing stuff we expect modern browsers to be able to support. Placeholder text and simple gradients are both not supported very well and that takes time and effort to build into your product. It's not about 90%, it's about getting that last 10% to work just right so the experience is clean and smooth for everyone involved. IE10 might be another story, but last time I checked IE10 isn't out yet. But it seems to me that Microsoft is always one step behind.
- underwater 14y ago
  What kind of site needs gradient support to be usable? Placeholders are bad for usability too; your shouldn't be relying on them.
Bxstraz 14y ago
This is a great post and should be read by every Web Designer out there.
lucian303 14y ago
The author completely missed the point. It's about trust not technology. That's why they're not supporting IE. Because of IE 6, 7, and 8.
drsim 14y ago
I'm calling link-bait on the original Paydirt post. Either that or Paydirt's prejudice against IE. But I believe they're smarter than that.
tony_le_montana 14y ago
In my experience, supporting IE9/10 is different from supporting IE6-8. Supporting IE6&7 is real pain.
SchizoDuckie 14y ago
In my opinion this is the beginning of the end for Microsoft. People are shouting out that they're done with it, and Microsoft is trying the same trick as before: Creating unneccesary lock-in where there is absolutely no use. Why did the first beta of IE10 work on windows 7 and now you need to download a 3.2 gb unfinished operating system? It's bullshit, It's insane, and once again the developers are being assraped by Microsofts marketeers. You can shout from the top of the highest building that you release a new version every month, Microsoft, but you way overplayed your hands. Now there's 4 major versions to support, hundreds of bugs to test. Developer environments to setup, weird registry hacks to do to get things working, and NO FRICKING DEBUG TOOLS. I'm one of the happy few people that are allowed to code for mostly webkit-based devices, and even though there's loads of fragmentation there, it's no were near as shitty as the experience i've had the past 8 years building IE compatibility.
- deleted 14y ago
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- overgryphon 14y ago
  Yes, the beginning of the end for Microsoft because IE is the only product they develope.
- deleted 14y ago
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xxyyzz 14y ago
The problem with IE is it's poor track record. We don't trust you to keep it up. Abandon the project and let people who care about beauty handle things, google.
tokenizer 14y ago
Isn't IE usually the only browser worth creating seperate stylesheets not to mention the browser who gives the most difficulty with your javascript? If Microsoft truly cared about the web, they would adhere to strict standards support and compliance, force updates for IE9 and below, and begin auto update cycles for their browsers. That may seem like a lot to ask, but it's the only things to me as a web developer I can see that could remedy their horrible reputation in the browser community. No one game app on their latest browser will change that.

267 points by cleverjake 14y ago

This may be schadenfreude, but as someone who's been around the web a long time, it really tickles me to see Microsoft have to fake their user agent string to get around an arbitrary browser restriction. Other browsers used to fake the IE user agent string. I suppose it's full circle since IE originally had to pose as Netscape's browser (Mozilla compatible).

jpadvo 14y ago
Same circumstance in both cases, though: _developers_, not browser vendors, unnecessarily restricting functionality based on browser sniffing.
- awj 14y ago
  Oh, it gets weirder than that. Much[1], much weirder. [1] http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/ http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
- mistercow 14y ago
  No, MS doesn't get to dodge blame that easily. They blatantly used non-standard features in their browser to stifle competition. Many developers were complicit in this but that was according to Microsoft's design.
  - gaius 14y ago
    Non standard features like... XMLHttpRequest? The entire AJAX industry, they invented. What were you saying again?
    - rpeden 14y ago
      Seems to me there has, for a long time, been a double standard when MS is involved. The response I often see is: Something non-standard but cool in IE? "Screw MS, they're trying to embrace and extend the web!" Something non-standard but cool in another browser? "I don't understand why people are complaining! Good ideas like these eventually become standards, and this is how innovation happens!"
      - mistercow 14y ago
        There is no double standard. If any single browser had the marketshare that IE had in its heyday, it would be irresponsible and anticompetitive for them to implement nonstandard features. But marketshare is spread much more evenly among the players today, so it's pretty much understood that a production site cannot rely on a browser-specific feature. Hell, most people don't even rely on modern standard features because they still want their stuff to work in IE6. Comparing experimental features today with the IE-flavored-web of 2002 is comparing apples to geese.
        biot 14y ago
        You might have a fair point regarding things like ActiveX which only work on Microsoft's own platform and serve to further lock-in to Windows. However, as was pointed out above, XMLHttpRequest is one such nonstandard feature that Microsoft introduced. How is that feature irresponsible and anticompetitive?
        mistercow 14y ago
        The feature is anticompetitive because it was part of a large-scale and well-documented effort within the company to coopt and/or destroy technologies not controlled by themselves. A handful of innovations (which would have happened anyway) that happened along the way do not justify that kind of behavior.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
irahul 14y ago
The arbitrary restriction(not browsers; explicitly placed by the developers) is there to ensure people don't see a broken version. I don't know about the recent IE versions, but earlier versions needed won't center align when I say `margin: 0 auto`(have to do a text-align: center then reset it in child container), have a different boxing model, doesn't support min-height, won't support hover on all elements etc etc. Rather than being bothered with placing conditional rules for non-compliant behavior, I would block IE if I can(i.e if a very small number of users are on IE). I don't know if the current IE behaves as expected, but even if it does, the users who aren't running upgraded IE are going to get a broken version and guess who they are going to think is an idiot(HINT: not IE). My company's site opens up all skewed up on IE because IE won't center the container when I say `margin: 0 auto`. If it were something I was trying to sell, my first instinct would be to check the IE demographics and depending on the numbers, either show a notice regarding using latest version of IE or other standard compliant browser(my preferred scenario), or invest a lot of time to fix it(shivers).
- brlewis 14y ago
  If I were interested in buying something from your web site, I would be less likely to bounce somewhere else as a result of seeing an uncentered container than I would as a result of being told to upgrade my browser. P.S. Browser restritions are placed by developers, speed restrictions by police, and height restrictions by amusement ride operators. It's not the browser, the speed, or the height that's doing the restricting.
  - irahul 14y ago
    > If I were interested in buying something from your web site, I would be less likely to bounce somewhere else as a result of seeing an uncentered container than I would as a result of being told to upgrade my browser. Depending on the demographics(what do I lose if I don't support outdated IE and how likely is my customer base to be running arcane IE), the amount of effort required to make sure my site runs on arcane IE; your bouncing off somewhere else might not matter to me. I didn't say putting up a notice saying use a modern browser will ensure customers will comply - I am saying that might be a reasonable compromise.
5teev 14y ago
Even using Mac IE5 (the best browser for Macs in its time) I sometimes had to fake the user agent to use some sites. So I also felt a little twinge of schadenfreude on reading this.
deleted 14y ago
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rbanffy 14y ago
AFAIK, Internet Explorer 10 user agent string starts with "Mozilla" ;-)
- jayferd 14y ago
  Most user-agent strings start with "Mozilla". It's a quirk from the very weird history of the user-agent string. http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/ http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    That doesn't change the fact IE started its life by pretending to be Netscape.
- josephcooney 14y ago
  Welcome to the internet.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

dpearson 14y ago

The problem is, IE 9 and 10 are not everywhere. I know for certain that my school (and, I'd be willing to wager, many businesses) only deploys IE 7 and 8. IE 6 still isn't dead, despite Microsoft publicly encouraging migration. Until Microsoft gets IE 9 and 10 adoption up, supporting Internet Explorer is tricky.

josefresco 14y ago
The problem really is that they are lumping ALL IE users into one "incompatible bucket" irregardless of the version and features supported. There's no need to get religious here, just support the browsers that have the features your web app needs.
- politician 14y ago
  You're talking about feature testing and progressive enhancement. Adopting that strategy doesn't mean that you no longer have to test every browser, it just means that you don't support a common level of functionality across browsers. Indeed, you'll still end up testing all the browsers all of the time, just with different expectations. These guys have been burned by IE to the point where they don't want to test it period. Feature testing doesn't get them there, but blacklisting does.
  - eropple 14y ago
    > These guys have been burned by IE to the point where they don't want to test it period. Alternate Character Interpretation: they want some hits from HN because "look at us, we don't support IE!!!".
- rhizome 14y ago
  Suffice it to say that Microsoft has a lot to answer for in this department.
mariusmg 14y ago
Irrelevant. Is not like that site works perfectly on initial release of chrome

amishforkfight 14y ago

Just a guess, but the inclusion of -ms prefixes indicate the use of a CSS preprocessor and some off-the-shelf mixin libraries for all the fancy crap.

reybango 14y ago
Possibly. Just seems odd that specific things are added but others aren't.

moron 14y ago

The site happening to work is not the same thing as support. Trust me.

chc 14y ago
That is quite true, but ultimately irrelevant to the article's point, which is that they are seemingly locking users out just for the heck of it.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Probably not just for the heck of it. The press might have factored in.
- moron 14y ago
  No, it's not irrelevant. Someday the site will change in a way such that it no longer happens to work in IE. But since they don't support IE, it won't be a bug. Support is a commitment to people, not a mere technical hurdle.
  - lmm 14y ago
    Not supporting it is fine. User agent sniffing is obnoxious.
  - chc 14y ago
    Maybe. I wouldn't really bet on the site becoming completely unusable in IE, but I suppose it's a remote possibility. Let's be generous to your argument and call it a 25% chance. At any rate, you're right that it would be irresponsible to say they support IE if they aren't willing to fix it in such a case. But because there's a 25% chance that the site could break sometime in the future, they go out of their way to break it right now? That's what they're talking about, and it's orthogonal to the idea of choosing what configurations to support. At the company where I work, we don't support people trying to eat the newspapers we put out, but we don't go out of our way to make the newspapers poisonous either.
sk3tch 14y ago

heelhook 14y ago

tl;dr the site works with IE9 and IE10. I find the style of writing of this post extremely obnoxious, was it really necessary to say the exact same thing with slightly different order in the words over and over? If your post is to be short because there's not a lot to say, don't extend it unnecessarily, get to the point, move on.

davidjgraph 14y ago
I thought that. Plus the commenter that tries to explain that Microsoft built up a good deal of "trust debt" over the IE 6-8 period for those who had to code through it, gets the same repeated in the comments. It's all very well that it technically might work, but we're dealing with humans here, humans that have been annoyed for a long time...
- dmix 14y ago
  Microsofts trust debt will start repairing when noone uses IE7 anymore. It's still at about 10% worldwide so many of use still have to fix mystery JS bugs in IE7 and even still some CSS oddities in IE8.
  - Joeri 14y ago
    Not to mention the joy of "can't execute code from a freed script" in IE9 (code that works fine in every other browser, even IE6, magically broke in IE9).
cooldeal 14y ago
I guess that the writer is (understandably) pissed, especially at Paydirt using a torn IE icon image on their browser denial page. https://paydirtapp.com/assets/ie_broken-7502950b14013927bbde4c0416f7a515.png https://paydirtapp.com/assets/ie_broken-7502950b14013927bbde... You would be pissed too, if someone claimed your product that you worked hard on to work well is publicly called out to be broken when it is not and dropping support for it a user feature(indirectly suggesting others should do it too).
philjohn 14y ago

FuzzyDunlop 14y ago

So, if Microsoft renamed IE10 to something entirely different, and packaged it as a standalone browser, would a site like Paydirt support it then? It seems to work fine, so why not? This, and comments like "The site happening to work" seem to have an underlying prejudice about IE. "It was IE, so it must be fucked some way or another." The old versions are, but try running the site on Chrome 1, or Firefox 3.6 (I believe a lot of old Ubuntu LTS releases have that). They'll be exactly the same. This should not become a trend.

moron 14y ago
> This, and comments like "The site happening to work" seem to have an underlying prejudice about IE. "It was IE, so it must be fucked some way or another." If it's my comment you're referring to, I said it "happens" to work in IE because if we are to believe the team, they didn't try to make it work in IE. It just does, by coincidence, for now. Support is a commitment, and committing to IE will mean work down the road that these people have decided not to do, because it is not valuable to them. This attitude of "Oh, it works in IE right now so they must just be pedantic asses" is short-sighted.
- mikeryan 14y ago
  It just does, by coincidence, for now So you're saying its just a fluke that IE9+ supports the same standards as Firefox and Chrome? Amazing luck that.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    Historically speaking, yes, but perhaps intentional in the present day. Who's to say, and better yet, who's going to spend scarce developer resources on proving it one way or the other? Unless you're doing corporate, that is.
    - qw 14y ago
      who's going to spend scarce developer resources on proving it This was the argument many had a decade ago about IE6. Lots of people designed for IE6 first and didn't spend time on alternative browsers. They were lucky that IE6 continued to be popular for so many years, but in the end it has caused a lot of problems. These days the markets move a lot quicker, so failing to support IE9 today may prove an expensive decision in a year or two.

janlukacs 14y ago

it's just a publicity stunt to get traffic to their site. since web devs mostly hate IE it an easy way to get their attention...

vph 14y ago
That is a bingo!
cooldeal 14y ago
Worked quite well on HN.
gm 14y ago
Well may have gotten traffic but did it get sales? Goodwill? Attracting traffic because you are being a dick is not the same as attracting traffic because you are making a world-changing awesome product.

sauravc 14y ago

IE may be annoying, and I certainly sympathize with the Paydirt crew. But this author makes a good point: "it’s exactly this type of behavior (writing for or against specific browsers) that sets the Web back again." Sometimes doing the right thing isn't the easiest path forward.

rhizome 14y ago
The unspoken assertion in that point? The only basis for including "again" is the past work of the IE team themselves.
- sauravc 14y ago
  Yup. But two wrongs don't make a right.

tnorthcutt 14y ago

They were using many CSS3 features supported since IE9, like transforms & border-radius, but just not adding the –ms vendor prefix entry They had the “-ms” prefix for CSS3 gradients which was added in IE10 They added support for -khtml-box-shadow but not -ms-box-shadow??? They didn’t support Opera either unfortunately All this crap recently about web standards and Opera adopting the webkit prefix and how bad some people think that is for the web? Paydirt, and people who think like them, are a huge part of the problem. Please don't do stuff like this.

arkitaip 14y ago
Do their customers care? Does it affect their bottom line?
recoiledsnake 14y ago
I use Opera as my main browser and I cringe when clicking on a link in HN which supposedly shows off usage of cool new features in HTML/CSS/JS/WebGL whatever. Then I hunt around the site which breaks on me with no message. Then have to trawl through the HN comments to realize that it only works in Chrome and no one bothers to put that in the headline or on the site. Note that this happens to lots of Google cool features or easter eggs. Is this really taking the web forward or setting it back to the "best works in IE" days (just without that helpful message) ? And now Opera is pissed at the usage of browser specific extensions and is adding support for -moz and -webkit which is sure to further mess up things.
- Zirro 14y ago
  "And now Opera is pissed at the usage of browser specific extensions and is adding support for -moz and -webkit which is sure to further mess up things." I know Mozilla has been discussing this as well, to have a chance to compete in mobile. Do you have a link to Opera's statement about it?
  - recoiledsnake 14y ago
    Here: http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-mobile-emulator-experimental-webkit-prefix-support/ http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-mobile-emulator-exp...

pippy 14y ago

Supporting IE has nothing to do with how well it renders a site. Supporting IE carries massive baggage as you have to pin yourself to Microsoft's erratic, tactic based release cycles and limiting yourself with future features. Chrome and Firefox now how have rolling releases and are closely tied with the developer community, so new features and rendering uniformity is what you gain. There's also the ethos you buy into by supporting IE: you're supporting a closed source, proprietary internet.

PaulHoule 14y ago
IE's moving to a similar "rapid release" schedule with other browsers. Microsoft has played many sneaky pete tricks in the browser wars (such as supporting a CSS standard that couldn't be correctly implemented in Netscape's codebase) but you can't blame their release schedule entirely on that -- Windows users tend to be a conservative lot who are terrified that Microsoft will push something that will break their cheap-ass intranet that's held together with string and ear wax.
- rhizome 14y ago
  conservative lot who are terrified that Microsoft will push something that will break their cheap-ass intranet Due to...everybody say it with me...lack of standards support.
  - bzbarsky 14y ago
    No, it's due to so many intranet applications being written as one-browser hacks completely ignoring standards. Mozilla has had similar issues with intranets (though not to as large an extent, due to their smaller install base), and you can't exactly blame _that_ on lack of standards support. What you _can_ blame it on is things like people writing intranet apps that depend on the user flipping some hidden pref in the browser to relax a security policy and then breaking when that pref is later removed, say.
  - FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
    Funnily enough, we had a similar problem at one of my previous employers with Firefox 3.6. If an institution sticks doggedly to one version of one browser, then it stands to reason any intranet software is going to be optimised for nothing other than that.

rbanffy 14y ago

I can see why someone would do it. If you are on Windows, you _can_ use other browsers - every browser is available on Windows. When I allow an IE user to use an application, I have to start testing on IE. In order to do that I'll have to make Selenium do some extra runs (IE 7, 8, 9, 10, Metro mode) under a Windows VM. I also need at least one (Win 7) Windows licenses (probably more, but I may be able to get away with permanently using it in preview) and, worst of all, when it breaks, I'll have to get the application fixed for, at least a couple versions of Firefox, Chrome and IE. And that if it breaks during testing - if it breaks with a user I'll have to start guessing what went wrong (if something did). Nah... Windows users can use Safari, Chrome or Firefox. edit: as pointed out by recoiledsnake, aaronbrethorst and Impossible Safari is available for Windows.

Impossible 14y ago
Safari is available for Windows and has been for years.
aaronbrethorst 14y ago
Safari is available for Windows: System Requirements: Any PC running Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista or Windows 7 http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1070?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1070?viewlocale=en_US&loca...
recoiledsnake 14y ago
Safari is available on Windows. Anyways, the author's beef was not that IE should be supported at any cost, but the claim that the features needed are not supported in IE and that's why it needs to be banished by User Agent(complete with a broken IE icon display).
darklajid 14y ago
I'm a Firefox user, working exclusively on Windows (although a Linux nut by night). If a site blocks any browser by user-agent _and I find out about that_ (as a user of FF that's not a regular case) that site is dead. I will create some childish rhymes about the creator of that thing, I'm going to compare it to acoustic couplers or pay phones and .. move on. There are good reasons to avoid supporting every browser and the IE brand _had_ (and has) problems. But user agent sniffing? That results in one reaction only (again, of course, limited to 'what I can notice'): This business isn't able to provide a usable web presence. I'm going elsewhere.

eagsalazar 14y ago

Doesn't anyone realize they just wrote that article and disabled ie9 to attract hipster freelance designers and developers? The whole thing is basically a PR stunt since they realized 99% of their hits were from Mac anyway. Especially having their article on Hacker News was just to get attention from the large freelancer following on HN. I'm no fan of IE. However explicitly blocking IE9 is just idiotic for any other reason. They could, at worst, just have a subtle notice letting people know it is optimized for Chrome/FF and their mileage may otherwise vary. However, for the reason of getting Mac using hipsters excited, it was pretty brilliant. (btw, I'm not a Mac or Windows user) Disclaimers: (1) This is just a theory. (2) I actually like hipsters. I just recognize they can sometimes be manipulated. Like everyone, they have their buttons.

rickmb 14y ago
From the way you throw the word "hipster" around like an epithet, I already guessed you are not a Mac or Windows user... Sorry, couldn't resist. My point is, making all those assumptions about people and their motives is just as "idiotic" as blocking IE9 in the first place.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  The veracity of those assumptions has little to do with whether or not Paydirt shared that thought process.

aneth 14y ago

What does it mean to "not support" a browser? Does it mean you know your site is broken in the browser? Does it mean you block that browser? Does it mean you intentionally broke your site in that browser? None of the above. It means you don't want to waste your QA time testing and fixing minor quirks in the browser and you don't want your users having a degraded experience on that browser. To protect your users, you may or may not provide a warning or block the browser entirely. Products are in constant development, and every CSS change or javascript feature has the potential to break a browser and require fixes. Just because it works now, doesn't mean it always will. It appears they successfully attempted to support IE, but decided it was not worth continuing, perhaps because of some breakage OP did not discover. Should they have stripped out any IE supporting code? That seems unnecessary.

wheelerwj 14y ago
It seems unnecessary to straight up block potential customers from signing up because of their browser. Encourage them to get the full experience using another browser might be a better idea.
- politician 14y ago
  Suppose you are the proprietor of a physical retail business. You're the only employee, so on Sundays you close the shop because otherwise you'd be short-staffed. Do you listen to potential customers who complain that you're not open on Sundays by (a) offering them a degraded experience by letting them shop while you aren't there, (b) hire additional staff to support the shop on Sundays, or (c) tell them to come back during normal business hours? If the amount of revenue you'd make by expanding the number of hours the store is open per week is less than the costs of supporting the additional staff, you ought to pick (c); otherwise, pick (b). It's bloody irrational to pick (a). Yet, in your post you advocate (a). Why?
  - recoiledsnake 14y ago
    Did you mean to post this comment to the previous article and not this one? The article shows that the site works in IE9 and IE10. Not to mention that the author not only chose (c) but also posted the equivalent of saying closing the shop on Sundays is a feature because Sundays suck for shopping(which is obviously wrong) and basically advised other sites to do the same.

jayferd 14y ago

If I, as a developer, decide my site supports a browser, I know I'm going to have to spend some time doing QA on that browser. Standards are cool, but I've run into enough FF and Chrome bugs that I always test. That being said, the cost of testing in IE is waaay higher than the cost of testing in FF and Chrome. Why? Because FF and Chrome are cross-platform, I and my fellow developers can test on our OS of choice. With IE, a testing environment costs my company about $300 per developer. Not to mention that setting up a VM for testing is the opposite of straightforward. After shaving a few yaks to convert the stupid VHD format to something VirtualBox can understand, you need to hack your local network so the VM can see its host. Also, the developer tools are crappy. Has anyone worked on those in the last 10 years? I use Chrome for development not because of "web standards", but because the debugging tools are awesome (some people swear by Firebug, also, YMMV). So I guess the point "support" is a little more complicated than "look, it works!".

FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
ievms[1] aims to make testing IE on a non-Windows box less complicated (it depends on VirtualBox). [1] https://github.com/xdissent/ievms https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
- jayferd 14y ago
  That sounds useful. This gets me though: > The VMs provided by Microsoft will not pass the Windows Genuine Advantage and cannot be activated. I mean, there's a workaround, but where's the love from Microsoft? Don't they want me to be able to test on their browser so my sites will support it?
  - tensor 14y ago
    This is really not a big problem. A non-activated version of windows will run for a while before rebooting. It's mildly annoying to have to reboot every now and then in extended testing, but it works sufficiently well. Microsoft's suggested solution is to just start from the raw image each time you start the vm. This way it will run without problems for 30 days. The images come pre-setup so you don't need setup time unless you want to install some extra debugging tools.

dutchbrit 14y ago

Claiming they no longer support IE means they'll stop writing "hacks" for IE from now (not as in last month) onwards.. But still, silly that they simply block IE and don't just show an extra message saying use X for the "ultimate experience". Maybe they should only block IE once they have an update that really will interfere with IE users. But on the other hand, that might piss of paying customers that actually use IE and refuse/aren't allowed to use anything else..

yuhong 14y ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3942003 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3942003

billpatrianakos 14y ago

It's easy to say IE9+ works but in the real world people aren't upgrading their version of IE like users of other browsers tend to do. While IE9 and above are much better than their predecessors by a long shot they still require you to jump through more hoops compared to any other browser. IE9 supports gradients but you have to feed it so,e conditional CSS for it to work as expected. Overall it's misleading to say "IE9 and above work just fine you elitist hipsters" when we all know damn well there are still so many users on versions of IE older than 9 because XP won't let you or simply because Mocrosoft has traditionally not really encouraged or made it as easy to upgrade. To their credit I'm glad they're running commercials for IE10 and for this case, considering PayDirt's audience, it could be fair to criticize them for leaving all IE users out because we can reasonably assume they're using the latest greatest even if it is IE. But if you want to talk about IE being no problem to support in general then it's disingenuous to only mention the two latest versions because we know there are far too many users of the older ones to ignore. Users of other browsers are upgrading regularly so it's trivial to support old FF or Chrome (plus even FF's and Chromes's older versions support a hell of a lot more than comparable older IE's). You know why we love to hate IE even when it improves? Because it feels like too little too late. Even the improvements are one step behind everyone else.

MicroAndMacro 14y ago
Bill. Just wanted to let you know that Microsoft has been auto-updating all users that have opted into MS updates on their Windows machines since January. A majority of XP users should now be on IE8, all other Windows machines should have IE9. http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/microsoft-decides-to-automatically-update-internet-explorer-for-everyone-20111215/ http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/microsoft-decides-to-...
rwallace 14y ago
Be that as it may, it remains the case that the right solution is "we don't support older versions of IE" (unless the client is willing to pay extra for that of course), not "we don't support IE at all". In the real world, you get much better reactions from telling people "we don't support the old versions, you need to upgrade" than from "we're on a crusade against your platform in its entirety". This remains true _whether or not_ the people in question are willing to upgrade just yet.

kadjar 14y ago

Did anyone else notice that font smoothing was significantly better in the Win7 screenshots than Win8?

ilaksh 14y ago

IE9 may have caught up on some things, but there are a lot of things it doesn't do, that Safari/Chrome and Firefox (as well as Opera in most cases) do do. So even if it might not be quite as hard now to get it to layout properly (it still is not the same as Chrome/Safari/Firefox/Opera, really, things just don't behave the same unless you train yourself to avoid things that IE9 doesn't like), there are lots of other reasons to avoid IE: ■ WebGL (3D) ■ WebSockets ■ HTML5 Forms (validation mechanism, CSS3 selectors) ■ FormData ■ HTML5 multifile-upload ■ HTML5 video (only with certain file formats) ■ CSS3 Transitions (for animations) ■ CSS3 Text Shadow ■ CSS3 Gradients ■ CSS3 Border Image ■ CSS3 Flex box model ■ Application Cache (offline) ■ Web Workers (threads in JavaScript) ■ Drag’n Drop from Desktop ■ SMIL Animations (SVG animations) ■ File API ■ JavaScript Strict Mode ■ ForeignObject (embed external content in SVG) ■ ClassList APIs ■ HTML5 History API Why are most of these features either already implemented in other browsers or available in development versions, but completely missing from Internet Explorer? Why haven't more of these features made it into the hands of Windows users? Its not because Microsoft can't figure out how to implement or deploy these features. Its because the web platform is fundamentally antagonistic to Microsoft's business model with its dominant Windows monopoly on business software, PC games and operating system deployment. Those features which enhance the web browser to make it most competitive with the desktop MUST not be deployed to Windows users any faster than absolutely necessary. It is an absolute business imperative for Microsoft to drag its feet and disrupt the web platform as much as it possibly can, because when all web browsers have web workers, 3D WebGL, WebSockets, File API, Gradients, Drag and Drop, HTML5 forms etc., it simply won't make business sense to write applications specific to Microsoft's platform. Pretty soon after that happens, it won't make sense to continue the Windows and Office licensing lock-in. So the relationship between a web developer (who understands the nature of the web platform) and Microsoft is fundamentally antagonistic.

mattmanser 14y ago
Oh god, we might as well start asking why FF didn't support ellipse for what seems like decades. Everyone has different release schedules. IE is a lot more conservative because they support enterprise who are mighty touchy. Grow The Fuck Up Cry Baby. I'm all for IE6 and IE7 whining, they suck. I'm even for IE8 and the entire stop at XP whining. Damn MS for that. But you just sound like a total privileged prat who doesn't have a clue what's going on when it comes to web standards. FF and Chrome have a lot more latitude. If you want to know what happens when stuff starts moving too fast keep an eye on the webkit mobile css support fiasco unfolding in front of us right now. There is such a thing as moving too fast.

andrew_wc_brown 14y ago

In my current project, I've decided only to support the chrome browser and all other user agents are redirected to a not supported page asking them to install chrome. I dont see the point in sacrificing my programmer happiness.

LocalPCGuy 14y ago

IMO, I agree with those that say it is a publicity stunt. It costs very little to support IE9+. Even IE8 doesn't take a ton of time to make it work, although you do have to do something about the CSS3 styles (CSS3PIE, for example.) But it is really dumb to make the choice to BLOCK a browser by user agent. How about feature detection or if you must block by browser, at least do IE8 and below. Note, I am a front-end dev, and I know the pain of developing for IE6 and IE7. But any front end dev with any professional skills can make a site that works in IE8+ without resorting to ugly hacks (I don't call polyfills hacks.) And IE9 supports a large percentage of the standards we use on a daily basis. Sorry, dumb move by Paydirt, with no monetary payoff.

JVIDEL 14y ago

When I meet with investors all they talk about is traction and traffic. If you have enough there are no more meeting, no calls, no demos. You get funded, no questions asked. IE is no longer 90% of the market, but it's still the biggest browser by market share. There are many early adopters, but not anywhere as much as regular users. Regular users make the bulk of any popular site/webapp's traction, and most of them use IE, period. A few years from now when IE becomes just another competitor and not the market leader we wont need to develop for it, and that might actually make more regular users move to FF or Chrome. Meanwhile you have to support it, because IE development will never ever be as difficult as getting enough traction.

HaloZero 14y ago

Paydirt is within it's full rights not to support IE9 when it's customer base doesn't really use it. The problem is that the author notices most things work (border radius) but doesn't realize that IE9 is missing stuff we expect modern browsers to be able to support. Placeholder text and simple gradients are both not supported very well and that takes time and effort to build into your product. It's not about 90%, it's about getting that last 10% to work just right so the experience is clean and smooth for everyone involved. IE10 might be another story, but last time I checked IE10 isn't out yet. But it seems to me that Microsoft is always one step behind.

underwater 14y ago
What kind of site needs gradient support to be usable? Placeholders are bad for usability too; your shouldn't be relying on them.

Bxstraz 14y ago

This is a great post and should be read by every Web Designer out there.

lucian303 14y ago

The author completely missed the point. It's about trust not technology. That's why they're not supporting IE. Because of IE 6, 7, and 8.

drsim 14y ago

I'm calling link-bait on the original Paydirt post. Either that or Paydirt's prejudice against IE. But I believe they're smarter than that.

tony_le_montana 14y ago

In my experience, supporting IE9/10 is different from supporting IE6-8. Supporting IE6&7 is real pain.

SchizoDuckie 14y ago

In my opinion this is the beginning of the end for Microsoft. People are shouting out that they're done with it, and Microsoft is trying the same trick as before: Creating unneccesary lock-in where there is absolutely no use. Why did the first beta of IE10 work on windows 7 and now you need to download a 3.2 gb unfinished operating system? It's bullshit, It's insane, and once again the developers are being assraped by Microsofts marketeers. You can shout from the top of the highest building that you release a new version every month, Microsoft, but you way overplayed your hands. Now there's 4 major versions to support, hundreds of bugs to test. Developer environments to setup, weird registry hacks to do to get things working, and NO FRICKING DEBUG TOOLS. I'm one of the happy few people that are allowed to code for mostly webkit-based devices, and even though there's loads of fragmentation there, it's no were near as shitty as the experience i've had the past 8 years building IE compatibility.

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overgryphon 14y ago
Yes, the beginning of the end for Microsoft because IE is the only product they develope.
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xxyyzz 14y ago

The problem with IE is it's poor track record. We don't trust you to keep it up. Abandon the project and let people who care about beauty handle things, google.

tokenizer 14y ago

Isn't IE usually the only browser worth creating seperate stylesheets not to mention the browser who gives the most difficulty with your javascript? If Microsoft truly cared about the web, they would adhere to strict standards support and compliance, force updates for IE9 and below, and begin auto update cycles for their browsers. That may seem like a lot to ask, but it's the only things to me as a web developer I can see that could remedy their horrible reputation in the browser community. No one game app on their latest browser will change that.