4 ms·

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, tact

by 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.
- chrismcbride 14y ago
  Do you have a source for that? From what I can tell its yearly releases.
gregschlom 14y ago
> There's also the ethos you buy into by supporting IE: you're supporting a closed source, proprietary internet. By your reasoning, nobody would write an iPhone app either, or anything targeted for a platform other than GNU/Linux.
- pippy 14y ago
  That point was very weak, I have to admit. I guess a better way of putting will be you're supporting an open internet by supporting open browsers. Not the other way around.
mkmcdonald 14y ago
> 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. Because they employ more evangelists? The IE team has spent a tremendous amount of resources informing developers about IE 9 and 10. Many of us just don't bother paying attention to them. > There's also the ethos you buy into by supporting IE: you're supporting a closed source, proprietary internet. The irony here is that you're supporting a closed Internet by ignoring browsers. What a wonderful luxury that is.

by pippy 14y ago

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.
chrismcbride 14y ago
Do you have a source for that? From what I can tell its yearly releases.

gregschlom 14y ago

> There's also the ethos you buy into by supporting IE: you're supporting a closed source, proprietary internet. By your reasoning, nobody would write an iPhone app either, or anything targeted for a platform other than GNU/Linux.

pippy 14y ago
That point was very weak, I have to admit. I guess a better way of putting will be you're supporting an open internet by supporting open browsers. Not the other way around.

mkmcdonald 14y ago

> 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. Because they employ more evangelists? The IE team has spent a tremendous amount of resources informing developers about IE 9 and 10. Many of us just don't bother paying attention to them. > There's also the ethos you buy into by supporting IE: you're supporting a closed source, proprietary internet. The irony here is that you're supporting a closed Internet by ignoring browsers. What a wonderful luxury that is.