16 ms·

Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

122 points by bartj3 14y ago

acuozzo 14y ago
Supporting IE isn't too much work. Trying to bend and twist WWW browsers to render something other than formatted-text-and-images-with-limited-interaction is too much work. You're bound to run into problems when treating document-display programs as ``platform''s.
evilvoidhamster 14y ago
the reason i bought a mac was to be able to test my work on all OS's. I thought that was a normal sensible thing todo (i.e. i can bootcamp and vm my way to full support)
omgmog 14y ago
It's not a lot of work to get a Windows/IE virtual environment up and running on a Mac, I use Virtualbox daily in combination with https://github.com/xdissent/ievms https://github.com/xdissent/ievms This shell script automatically downloads Windows virtual machine images from Microsoft, so that testing can be done in IE6/7/8/9. You don't even need to use separate machines, if you get a Windows 7 virtual machine set up you can use IE Tester to run IE5.5-9 http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage
- doc4t 14y ago
  It's actually much more work to test on a Mac when developing on a Windows machine since Apple is so protective of OS X that they don't allow it to run in a vm. Which is sad because I like to have all kinds of users but it's really really difficult to accommodate for all you guys browsing on a mac. Please hit me with hints to make life easier for myself if you have some...
  - codesuela 14y ago
    but at least there is Safari for Windows
  - chao- 14y ago
    Agreed. Not a single person in my company (a whole five people) owns a Mac, and it leaves us with no real options on the compatibility front. I prefer to develop in Linux, but I have a Windows partition since it's easy enough to do. But none of us have the pocket change lying around to buy a redundant machine just to check up on some demonstrably minimal segment of our users who use Safari on OS X. I'll put in the time to boot into a Windows partition and double-check IE9, but when it comes to OS X/Safari, I've got little recourse but to crossing my fingers and bank on Safari's Webkit rendering being the same as (or close enough to) Chrome in Windows and Chromium in Linux. Safari DOES have a Windows version, but I've never seen it enter into the conversation at all. Is it guaranteed to have true rendering/display parity with the OS X variant?
    - doc4t 14y ago
      "Is it guaranteed to have true rendering/display parity with the OS X variant?" No. Last time I made a hackintosh running Safari on Win and Mac sometimes produced different outcomes in certain scenarios. Things might have changed though.
    - zbuc 14y ago
      > I'll put in the time to boot into a Windows partition and double-check IE9, but when it comes to OS X/Safari, I've got little recourse but to crossing my fingers and bank on Safari's Webkit rendering being the same as (or close enough to) Chrome in Windows and Chromium in Linux. Might want to try the Windows version of Safari then. The JS engines in Chrome and Safari have some quirks between them and can behave differently in some scenarios, mostly things that JSLint would catch though.
  - omgmog 14y ago
    If you can stomach it, there's Safari for Windows, Google Chrome should render the same across platforms, as should Firefox. The only thing you'd need a Mac for really is ensuring that your colors/contrast look good, and that fonts are readable (on account of the font hinting). The other option, of course, is to either buy a Mac, or build a Hackintosh.
    - stutter 14y ago
      Macs run Windows, Windows don't run OSX. This is why I develop on Mac; it's more versatile. (For web development)
      - untog 14y ago
        Well, that's one way of phrasing it. Microsoft allows you to run Windows in a virtual machine, Apple bans you from doing so. That's why I develop on a Mac; Apple forces me to.
axefrog 14y ago
I honestly think a lot of hacker types really do live in a bubble where they think it's still 2000, Microsoft is still the same evil company they were, Apple still can do no wrong, most people now use Macs "if they know what's good for them", RoR, node.js and Python are really the only valid technologies for back end development and so forth. Certainly plenty of folks out there using the aforementioned technologies are more worldly than my previous statement would suggest, but there are still an irritating number of developers living in the past who haven't really got a realistic view of the technology landscape as it exists today, in 2012. I also notice this on various high profile podcasts that from time to time downplay anything from Microsoft as having any value these days, despite not really having had recent first hand experience of what's available. I prefer Chrome myself, but supporting IE9 really isn't that hard, and suggesting otherwise is FUD. The landscape has changed in the last five years. Hopefully over time, especially as the landscape continues to change, the antifanboys will realise this and update their views.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  IE9 is not that bad. To prove to myself that it was not, I forced myself to use it as my main browser for a while. It was not painful at all. It had reasonable speed, and although lacking some CSS3 features that are nice, it is generally a decent browser. And it runs one of my Canvas demos much more smoothly than Chrome or Firefox, since it hardware accelerates canvas rendering.
  - drhowarddrfine 14y ago
    IE9 is bad. Lacking CSS3 features is not "OK". Lacking WebGL is not "OK". The only reason it runs web sites to your satisfaction is due to the hard work of developers beating their heads against the wall to make IE9 perform correctly. IE is the worst browser on the planet and always will be.
  - nadvorny 14y ago
    It's not that IE9 is bad. It's that IE is not only IE9. It's IE7,8,9 and 10. Testing on all IE versions takes as much time as testing on all other browsers. They all have their unique issues. And you can't run all of them on one machine safely. And you usually use IE7 as the least common denominator, thus sacrificing functionality.
5h 14y ago
I work neck deep with cross browser "stuff" frequently, frankly, IE9 is a breeze & imho Paydirt made themselves look really quite daft!
givan 14y ago
In some cases, not supporting IE is like a filter, if you offer a web service that involves some web tech background from users then it will save you some support hours, people that don't understand basic stuff like what a browser is can be a pain for support or probably would never signup either.
- bartj3 14y ago
  True, and that is probably the case for Paydirt, but there's a difference between not supporting and actively blocking. Less than 2% of Paydirt's visitors use IE, so dropping support is a logical choice. Maybe even display a warning to IE users but don't block them.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    You haven't given an actual reason why they shouldn't block IE users. Could you explain why that is?
pwaring 14y ago
As always, it depends on your audience. If 1% of your users have IE, then it may well be too much work to support it - although 8/9 are a massive improvement on 6/7. On the other hand, if you're in my position and run a site where 100% of the users have IE installed in a corporate environment (i.e. often an old version), support is never 'too much work'.
ry0ohki 14y ago
On that same note, if you don't have enough users to make IE worth supporting, you better have a product targeted at techies, because it does not have wide enough adoption yet among average people.
slig 14y ago
Did you guys forget what pain in the ass was a couple of years ago when IE was the most used browser everywhere? Seriously, f. Microsoft. Just because finally they made a decent browser, doesn't mean that we should be that grateful. Their business was "make a shitty browser while we can", and now that they can't anymore "ok, sorry guys, here's very nice browser, btw, it won't work on our most used OS version, even though every other browser works".
- sgift 14y ago
  "We" simply prefer to base our decisions on the current state of affairs, not on the way things where years ago. If your business requires you to support IE, do it. If not: don't. But please don't make it sound like you have some holy war to fight. Thanks.
  - axefrog 14y ago
    ^ This.
ivanbernat 14y ago
It's time we separate "full-stack" developers from "front-end" and "back-end" guys / gals. I've met some brilliant folks who write amazing Ruby but say they hate CSS or JS. Those are "back-end" guys. A "front-end" person will write CSS and HTML markup without a problem and will always make sure it's cross-browser compatible. I've been coding front-end markup for 7 years now and I've never come across a IE-specific issue that took longer than 5 minutes to resolve, and 99% of the time my markup worked without any "hacks" at all. I'm talking about ~450 projects. So my advice to all the startups calling "not supporting IE a feature" to outsource their markup to a company that will do it right. Remember, 90% of the world ISN'T using a Mac or a *nix flavor (I'm personally on a Mac) and many of them have no idea they can choose a different browser. Saying NO to someone just because they use a browser you don't like is like going around and bashing people based on their sexual preferences or religious beliefs. F-it, I'm still on Firefox, which is now far behind Chrome, will you ban me access in a year? I keep telling startups, EDUCATE YOUR USERS. Put a banner and tell te to upgrade to IE9 or install Chrome Portable if they don't have the required permissions.
- white_devil 14y ago
  > I've never come across a IE-specific issue that took longer than 5 minutes to resolve, and 99% of the time my markup worked without any "hacks" at all. Now that's a flat-out lie right there.
  - grabastic 14y ago
    Or it's the truth and his ~450 projects have been of low to medium css/js complexity. Or even high complexity and he got really, really, really lucky.
    - ivanbernat 14y ago
      I'd say 80% of all projects were done within 24hrs (standard delivery time) while other projects were 40-page multy-style apps (mostly custom "CRM" solutions). Heck, I even had requests do make the markup IE6-only.
skrebbel 14y ago
I really subscribe to the attitude in this post. We're developers, we're supposed to make decent software. Our users won't care whether it's our fault or somebody else's if the software doesn't work. Just like you don't go blaming the database if your app becomes slow, you shouldn't blame the browser for rendering your page wrong, even if you're right! Dammit, we're grown ups here. Make decent software! Test it! Automate the tests! Gracefully degrade! Yes, it's difficult, yes, it's costly! Get over it already! Either make a fancy web app that works, or just make it highly non-fancy (HN, anyone?) to avoid all the headache. Or go somewhere halfway, as long as you're in control.
- robert_nsu 14y ago
  I agree. Or at the very least, identify what your users are using (in my case IE9 and webkit via iOS) and test accordingly. Granted I am only making things for internal consumption among a very small pool of users, but still If I decided to only test for Safari and Chrome, I need my teeth kicked in for being lazy.
- vbigham 14y ago
  Absolutely. IE still has tons of users in the world, and it seems a joke to not invite them to the party. It doesn't really bother me as much if they change the features per browser platform, but when you visit a site and it browser sniffs and comes back with a blanket message "Browser not supported please upgrade." that's when I know that the dev is a lazy piece of shit. They don't even bother to try to let it degrade so that people can still access the content, they just shut it off. Rediculous and immature is what this is, why would you put effort into being such a hater especially when its your customers that are being stopped? I suggest that we windows users boycott the sites that simply block IE. If it removes features I would skip it as well. Not supporting IE shows a lack of commitment to your users. As a user, I object to such half-assed notions. Its already bad enough with the entire dev community telling their users what they must do and how they must act. There is really no reason to be blocking IE10 at this point (yes I've seen it and was shocked and amazed that the fool would actually do that).
jan_g 14y ago
>Testing in IE is too much works… because they’re on a Mac. To be honest, lots of companies use similar excuses. We won't make/support our product X on platform Z, because the user base is too small, we don't have the hardware, developers are all on platform Y, etc. And generally speaking (no reference to paydirt example) it is in fact true, there are companies without a single windows machine. Unimaginable 5-10 years ago, but reality today.
gaius 14y ago
I think a general problem with "webdevs" is they have "year zero" mentality - anything prior to the release of their favourite framework, didn't really exist, and if they do acknowledge its existence, it's only to observe how worthless it is. It's almost religious in nature. You see this in particular in the Ruby world where they are forever reinventing the wheel, but it's certainly not limited to them. IE6, because I am old, and remember, was the first browser that you could build real applications with desktop feel in (e.g. Outlook Web Access). Lots of in-house developers jumped on it, and wrote millions of lines of code. You might think it's too much work to support IE6; they think it's too much work with too little reward to rewrite everything in whatever's trendy this week, because it basically does what their users need and they have real, actual work to do.
- valuegram 14y ago
  >> anything prior to the release of their favourite framework, didn't really exist, and if they do acknowledge its existence, it's only to observe how worthless it is. It's almost religious in nature. For me at least, its not about religion but economics. Writing standards compliant code that works in all modern browsers costs a certain amount. Writing standard compliant code that is also backwards compatible with older technologies and legacy browsers may cost significantly more. The cost is one issue, of course the larger program is the value. Legacy browsers like IE6&7 compose slightly over 3% of the market share last month. Without even getting into the demographics of those people, it often isn't worth it to tweak for those specific cases. That being said, I always leave it up to the customer. This is the issue in the browsers, here is your traffic effected, this is what it would cost to fix. I can see the agitation with IE6&7, but the newer releases have gotten much better. For the most part, something I develop mainly in FireFox works fine in the newer IE releases.
- driverdan 14y ago
  Software is a depreciating asset with a finite life. This is something you need to take into account whether it's writing something for Windows 3.1 or the web. Maintaining, updating, and migrating is part of the lifecycle.
- fellowniusmonk 14y ago
bwm 14y ago
I think it depends on how far along you are in your product development lifecycle. If you're at the MVP stage or you're making big changes to your product regularly, then don't support IE, it'll slow iteration time in a similar (although not to the same extent) way that launching with an iPhone and Android app would. If you've got product market fit, paying users and have the bandwidth to support it then you probably should.
PeterisP 14y ago
I can second that. Forget about IE - there are differences even for Safari/MacOS and Safari/Windows, so if you are testing only on MacOS then you aren't doing it well.
xutopia 14y ago
Supporting IE can be too much work. The Microsoft Knowledge base acknowledges issues and then tells you that the solution is to change your IE options or upgrade your browser. As if that will help with my users. Sure the latest versions of IE are not as painful to support but if you check worldwide statistics you'll notice that old versions of IE are still sticking around.
- rahx 14y ago
  so is your problem with ie or ignorant users?
stutter 14y ago
You don't have comments on your blog, so I'll comment here: IE testing is "hard" on a Mac because of the vm requirement, yes. However, that's not even my main issue. If Microsoft facilitated having VMs of each windows installation + browser version available for that OS to developers, it'd still be "hard" but at least they'd be helping. IE only runs on Windows, so if you want to test for Windows you have a bunch of sub-par options, or really expensive options, or..illegal options, pick your poison. That's not even my biggest complaint about it, though. I have two main complaints. First, the development tools available to Internet Explorer are absolute butt hole. Javascript is considered a second class citizen, and is nearly impossible to debug efficiently. The amount of "oh lets try this for shits and giggles" that is required, to see if it will fix a random IE issue is absolutely astounding. I typically find my solutions to IE issues by complete accident, and upon reflection say to myself "well..that's the most stupid thing I could have thought of - so no wonder that works." Not simple, stupid. It feels like Microsoft deliberately takes the stance of making it HARD to develop software for Internet Explorer. I don't know if this is purposely their philosophy but maybe they're diluted enough to think it helps turn out higher quality applications. It doesn't, what it produces is a horrible user experience designed for the lowest-common denominator. And the worst part about it is that most of your end-users use IE. So, what it results in is crappy, old feeling, slow web applications and an influx of user complaints about things not working or taking too long (because the javascript engine is about as slow as the Ruby interpreter). Second, the IE user base is so incredibly fragmented across versions. And it's not like the difference between chrome 13 and chrome 18 where some css3 features don't work, or websockets is slow, or whatever. The difference is that entire feature sets are missing, or work differently. In one version CSS box width includes margin and in the next, it doesn't. That's a pretty significant change; it completely ruins the entire flow of your site and you have to account for "special" cases of old browsers. Except, your "special cases" of old browsers are 30% of the internet population. Supporting IE is a time sink, but not just because it's "hard" to set up Windows environments, but because Microsoft actively tries to make it hard for developers to code, test, and debug applications in Internet Explorer. Or doesn't make an effort to alleviate the pain; either way it's active effort in creating more suck, imo. Disclaimers: I've been developing on Mac for 4 years and haven't used Internet Explorer as an every-day browser in 7 years. IE8 made some improvements to JS debugging (SOME) and is vastly better than 6 and 7. IE9 might be amazing, and IE10 might be the best browser in the world - I don't know. All I know is that debugging IE takes almost as long as building the application did in the first place. Until that problem is solved, IE will still suck and still get a lot of hate from the development community. Microsoft has a giant mountain to climb to get their reputation back to "neutral" in the web development community.
nirvdrum 14y ago
While I agree that supporting multiple browsers & devices is a PITA, we as an industry are still employing some mindnumbingly bad testing practices. There are a lot of solid testing products out there that ease the pain. Testing as a service has made cross-browser testing simple and cheap the way hosted services have for all sorts of other problems. Obviously I have a real interest in this, given I'm a Selenium dev and I started one of these testing as a service companies, but that really was a result of wanting to ease the pain. I highly recommend checking out Sauce Labs for functional testing and Mogotest (my aforementioned company) for render-level testing. Both beat the crap out of running a bunch of VMs and manually testing (although falling back to the VM to fix something may make sense).
rahx 14y ago
"Your main job is development, not being a hipster." right on!
grampajoe 14y ago
It doesn't matter whether you agree with a company's technical choices, whether it's Paydirt, Microsoft, or anyone else. If you don't like their choices, you're free to not use their software.
PaulHoule 14y ago
It's pretty funny... Back in 2003 I worked at a place which couldn't test software on Macs because they had an exclusive procurement contract with Dell. As things turned out, I bought my first Mac, with my own money, so I could do this kind of testing. Now today, Macbook Pros are the fashionable thing west coast developers use -- they are pretty nice machines. Except for the fact that they can only be loaded with 8 GB of RAM and for the kind of work I do, that's not enough. So instead of being able to do the work on your local machine and have no problems with VPN, debuggers, and all that, you need to rent a machine that's $8000 a year in AWS and you don't get the benefit of turning it off when you don't need it because the Ops guy is involved with turning it on and off and god forbid another dev wants to use it and its turned off...
- eropple 14y ago
  > Now today, Macbook Pros are the fashionable thing west coast developers use -- they are pretty nice machines. Except for the fact that they can only be loaded with 8 GB of RAM and for the kind of work I do, that's not enough. All 15" MBPs from Early 2011 onward support 16GB of RAM. It's not documented, but they do.
icodeforlove 14y ago
I can understand not supporting anything <IE9 but it currently doesn't make sense to target away from a browser that follows majority of the standards. Microsoft has already said sorry for the shitty browsers in the past and they have done a pretty good job with creating IE9 (minus the compatibility mode). I find just as many bugs in Chrome/Safari/Firefox as i do in IE9.
doc4t 14y ago
Since so many are complaining about the difficulty of developing/debugging in IE here is a couple of links that should make it easier for you Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=18359 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1835... VPC Images for XP/IE6, Vista/IE7, Win7/IE8, Win7/IE9 - you can import the images to VMware and VirtualBox http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11575 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1157... MS Script Debugger and how to http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2004/10/26/247912.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2004/10/26/247912.aspx Detecting Memory Leaks http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2007/11/29/tools-for-detecting-memory-leaks.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2007/11/29/tools-for-dete... VS Express (free) http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/express http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-ed... Firebug Lite http://getfirebug.com/firebuglite http://getfirebug.com/firebuglite I'm sure there are more some where...
- xutopia 14y ago
  I prefer the ISO than the images for Windows 8 Consumer Preview => http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows-8/iso http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows-8/iso
- NelsonMinar 14y ago
  Microsoft's virtual machine images work great in VirtualBox. It's a bit of a PITA setting them up manually, but it's very easy with the installer shell script at https://github.com/xdissent/ievms#readme https://github.com/xdissent/ievms#readme
- vbigham 14y ago
  Props for posting these! Now we need to turn this list into blog posts.
chris_wot 14y ago
Interesting. I created a javascript module that emulates an ActiveX control. It needs to parse binary data sent from the web server. I actually got it working in Opera, Firefox, Chrome and Safari via JDataView, which parses the binary data via a string. However, it doesn't work in Internet Explorer because IE will not read past a zero byte (null character). The data is actually there, you can see it in the debugger, but it won't let you get to it. This behaviour isn't mandated by the ECMA spec, and all other browsers handle it fine. You can do a massive VBScript hack, which may stop working at any time. I decided that I'd not support Internet Explorer because I can't use it - even in IE9 and 10. Call me lazy if you like - I don't care. I'm not hacking up VBscript to get around a crazy Microsoft Javascript string processing decision!
- untog 14y ago
  Holy edge case, batman! I get what you're saying, but no-one in this discussion is trying to emulate ActiveX controls, just make a web site. And recent versions of IE really aren't that bad for it.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    Actually, that was my use case. Quite a few people are using jdataview for other interesting applications. I was merely explaining what I was trying to do, sure it's an edge case but it's actually an example of where Microsoft don't follow the ECMA standard. Not sure why the post was voted down. I think the fact that Microsoft aren't following the ECMA standard for string processing is actually a fairly egregious example of why it's just not worthwhile in many instances to develop for IE.
drewmclellan 14y ago
Testing in different browsers is a real pain. Getting front end code working properly in all those different browsers is even more of a pain. Getting that code working really well is harder still. It takes time, dedication, skill, and a lot of specialist knowledge of bugs, quirks, standards and tools. That's the reason that front end development is a role in its own right, and not just a function of someone else's role.
S_A_P 14y ago
I cant see how anyone could say it is too difficult to test windows on a mac. Bootcamp serves exactly that purpose, and you can use windows on a nice piece of hardware. IMHO, developers are payed a higher than average salary, precisely because it can be hard. If everyone could do it, there would be no reason to pay more. Having built some web apps in my day, I get that its a pain in the ass to support IE 6, 7 and to some degree 8. There may even be a reasonable use case where not allowing a feature on a certain browser version is reasonable. I didnt, however, see a compelling argument made by Paydirt to that effect.
frankiejr 14y ago
It's sad to see otherwise talented developers focusing on the process more than the product, and putting their craft above the user experience. After all, it's all about the users. Doing good work and making excuses don't mix. If you use any excuse not to test on any browsers in any Windows environments, you're ignoring the fact that the vast majority of users are on the Windows platform -- ~90% worldwide, ~81% in the US. I'm talking OS, not browser. (If you think there's not much difference, try borrowing a Windows machine and viewing the way most @font-face rendering works on that platform.) And if you prescribe to the thought "my users are mostly on Mac," your growth will be severely limited if you're ignoring 80-90% of the users out there. Development & testing are two separate tasks. Don't confuse their respective toolsets.
talmand 14y ago
As a front-end developer who attempts to keep up with the latest and greatest in my industry, I have to say that there does seem to be some sort of bubble with people on their Macs. Too many times I've seen documentation that assumes that everybody is on a Mac. Too many times I've seen demos that assumes that everybody is on a Mac. Too many times that software that can easily be cross-platform are not or they don't document it as such. Too many times I've seen comments that say if you aren't developing on a Mac then they heavily imply you're a loser. Much of that also assumes that everyone has an iPhone or an iPad. For instance, why is getting Phonegap up and running on a Windows machine such a tragic pain in the ass? I got it going on my laptop to play with and after that experience I'm considering putting "successfully installed Phonegap on a Windows machine" on my resume and LinkedIn profile. I may be missing something but even the Windows install documentation I've seen on their website is several versions behind the current release. As a counter, getting SASS running on my Windows machine was a breeze in comparison. Now, if it's software and you only want to develop it for OSX, that's cool. But if it's a simple tool that can easily run cross-platform, then don't pretend it doesn't. It's like the complaints about webkit only prefixes on so much stuff on Github, I'm willing to bet it's because of Mac people not caring about every other browser/OS out there. That's a guess, nothing to back that up. Most of the people who complain about developing for IE being difficult seem to be Mac people and more than likely have no idea what they're talking about. With my job I support gecko, webkit, and IE7+. Until recently that included IE6. I do not use hacks unless I absolutely have to and I avoid using IE-only style sheets. IT IS NOT THAT HARD! If you think supporting modern versions of IE is too hard then you may need to reconsider your workflow as it's probably the problem. It is your job to support all the browsers your customers use despite your personal feelings on the matter. Of course, if the browser use is below a certain percentage you're comfortable with, then by all means go for it. I do. I develop on a Windows machine because our platform is based on .Net. We have two Macs in the office that two of our designers prefer. If need be I can ask them to look at something for me. I personally do not develop for nor test for Safari on OSX so I have no idea of all the differences and challenges of developing for it. But I sure as hell don't say it's too hard to bother with.
- fellowniusmonk 14y ago
  When you run your own site your job is to do whatever you want, however you want, it's your chance to be opinionated and exclusionary, and as long as you are not begging me to invest money, more power to you. Also open source and sharing is more robust on linux and posix platforms, so people naturally develop tools they can use on their own platform, with their own workflow, and who cares if it gets ported to windows, I'm not creating a product to sell, I am sharing my personal toolset in a friendly way. Why are you complaining about the difficulty of installing a FREE opensource project on a platform that is not native to the Devs? Of course it's more difficult! Why are you complaining so loudly? Why are your expectation so entitled? Did you even bother asking for help on Stackoverflow?
e_proxus 14y ago
Windows 7 Proffesional: $249 VirtualBox: Free --- Total cost to run IE under Mac: $249 Is it really that hard?
- masklinn 14y ago
  > Windows 7 Proffesional: $249 Why would you do that? http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11575 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1157...
pudakai 14y ago
First, I tend to agree that the Microsoft bashing is a little overdone. They've been moving forward legacy code for a product that now is by far the oldest browser in the field while at the same time having to support an obviously enormous user base. They've made their cost vs. timeliness vs. goodness decisions as is their right to do so. We make the same decisions about IE compatibility work. Being a very early stage startup, we figure two things: 1) The field of IE users has a lower percentage (and perhaps absolute number) of potential early adopters. For our app, this is a dead certainty, although it is not necessarily so for other apps. 2) IE users, who aren't constantly comparing how a site looks in IE against how it looks in other browsers, are accustomed to things being a little off from time to time. This is their IE world. So our acceptance level at this stage is does everything work and does it look basically ok in IE. We don't sweat a lot of the finer stuff, again, figuring most of the the IE users are in a world where things are off by a few pixels here and there and don't get too upset by it. If they did, they'd be on the other browsers, where the sun shines a little brighter and the birds sing a little sweeter for all websites. That is the important point to remember - browser type users are self-selecting in their tolerance for UX hiccups.
jayferd 14y ago
FWIW, as a Linux user I have the same problem with Safari. But thankfully it uses the same rendering engine as Chrome, so I can be relatively sure that if it works in one, it works in the other. IE is another can of worms.
sil3ntmac 14y ago
ievms dude, ievms. https://github.com/xdissent/ievms https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
leephillips 14y ago
If you use these two free tools, your days of developing "for" particular browsers will be over: http://validator.w3.org/ http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
jacquesm 14y ago
For the record, I hate IE with a passion. But look at it this way: If you purposefully ignore a segment of the market you open yourself up to attack. Better have that cost-benefit worked out, too much work probably isn't a good excuse at any scale that matters. If you're just playing around then fine, go for it. But if you're playing for keeps then be very careful with decisions like these. You'll be on your high horse over there telling people to upgrade or gtfo, meanwhile I'll be over here making off with a very large chunk of your potential userbase and everybody they pull along. That adds up, and if you're not careful it will add up to business failure. Ignore your potential users at your peril.
akmiller 14y ago
One thing, many of these anti-IE articles seem to ignore is business outside of the United States. We are a global business and China's most popular browser (at least with users hitting our site) seems to be Maxthon which is based on the Trident rendering engine (which of course is what IE uses). This makes it nearly impossible for us to ever consider cutting off IE support unless we wanted to neglect one of our largest growing user-bases in the world. Make sure you seriously consider which parts of the world your app could potentially be used in and do the research to find out what browsers they use in that area.
RandallBrown 14y ago
The web is a platform like any other. Supporting IE takes testing and development time and more importantly SUPPORT time. So why block IE users and not just let them fend for themselves since you don't "support" it? Because you're still going to get people trying to use your site in IE. They're going to send you support emails and they're going to complain to people about your shitty app not working. That costs time, money, and reputation.
giardini 14y ago
IMO part of Microsoft's strategic view is that any developer time spent on non-Microsoft technology is bad, so they saturate the developer with Microsoft-specific requirements and deviations from otherwise well-established standards. Microsoft's proprietary software development products (Visual Studio, .NET, etc.) present the developer with complex non-standard terminologies, languages, categories and specifications unique to Microsoft tools and platforms. In the more open sphere of the WWW where Microsoft has at times dominated the market, the same strategy applies: inundate web developers with deviations from the standards and with Microsoft-specific "innovations". It works as long as Microsoft has a large share of the market because you simply cannot ignore their presence. In the end, much, if not most, of your time is used up supporting Microsoft's idiosyncracies, leaving less time for alternatives.
JangoSteve 14y ago
I agree with the point in general, but for one subtle detail: What shocked me even more is the amount of comments saying that “supporting IE is too much work”, not because it still costs the crazy amount of time it used to (ie6), but because they’re developing on a Mac. No, it's not that it's difficult on a Mac. It's that it's difficult on a [not Windows]. Subtle difference, but undermines much of the "grow up" point of the article. You're saying developers are whining because Microsoft doesn't support their operating system of choice. But that's incorrect, they're whining because MS doesn't support anyone's operating system but their own. And even if it was simply that you can't easily debug IE on a Mac, the fact of the matter is, all the other major browsers allow it. Who cares if it's unreasonable to ask Microsoft to provide us a build for easy use and debugging? Every other vendor (i.e. competitor) does it at the exact same price point: $0. If IE lacks this "feature" at the same price point as the competitors, then I say deciding not to support IE is fair game (though I wouldn't personally exclude IE for anything other than a toy side project).
rglover 14y ago
If I had to guess, I'd say that most of the complaints don't involve layout issues but rather, support of newer features in HTML5 and CSS3. That being said, there are plenty of (easy) fixes and workarounds that take care of most problems. Is it frustrating? Yup. But like the article says, it just comes with the territory. For newer front-end devs, I'd recommend dedicating a few days familiarizing yourself with the various bugs, fixes, and tools for testing. That alone will ease the pain. Just takes time like anything else. Chin up, sport.
jamespcole2 14y ago
I generally don't bother supporting anything lower than IE8. If you want to use my app and are using an old version of IE just download chrome, it's free, otherwise don't use the app. I have used only Linux for about the last five years but i do test in IE using VirtualBox and the free VHD's provided by Microsoft(thanks guys). I don't mind using the VM approach but the thing that annoys me is the massive size of the VHD files. My Ubuntu install is only about 3GB but each windows VM is around 16GB - 16GB!!! Considering I need a separate VM for every version of IE I want to test and I am using 128GB SSD's in my laptop and Desktop most of my disk space is taken up with having VM's to test IE. That being said I think it's worth supporting newer versions of IE but I always display a message to users recommending they get a better browser, I think the more people we can get away from using IE the better because while IE10 might be ok now i just don't trust MS ability to update it in the future and i worry that in 10 years we'll all be bitching about IE10 the way we bitch about IE6 now because millions of users will still be running out of date browsers because of the poor update path for IE.
geoffvader 14y ago
Wow. I can't believe what I'm seeing here. "Development isn't easy so we're not gonna bother". Jesus, lets hope the people looking for a cure for cancer don't give up that easily. Here's a tip. Open IE9 and press F12. It lets you go to IE 7 and 8, in quirks and standards mode. Now that wasn't hard was it? Most internet users use IE. If your clients are happy not to support them then good for you. But most of mine would like people to be able to see their website!!!
satovey 14y ago
"It’s expensive getting hardware to test on, taking time to test it, making sure you have a windows installation" I infer two inferences from the above quote: Inference 1. The individual is either a non paid, or poorly paid developer, Inference 2.That developing on a mac is not as financially rewarding as developing on a PC. Why else would it be to costly to purchase an off the shelf PC from Walmart for $500.00 for the purpose of testing IE 9?
md8n 14y ago
Thanks for your rant Bart and I'd largely have to agree. If you want pixel-perfect equality between all browsers then supporting IE6 is truly a pain. Why anyone would want pixel-perfect equality is beyond me though because the end-users simply don't care. The real argument for the stuff I've worked on wasn't IE vs. the rest, it was HTML4-ish (IE 6,7,8) vs HTML5 (IE9, FF, Chrome, Safari, Opera). Even then using jQuery + Knockout on the client side solved nearly every compatibility problem. There was also an actual advantage with testing against older versions of IE as it enabled us to identify weird performance and behavioural problems earlier. When we ignored a given problem in IE6,7,8 during the development phase the same problem would turn up later in all of the other browsers when the system was under load. Fixing the problem for IE6,7,8 got us a massive jump on fixing the problem for all of the other browsers. Personally for my own stuff the oldest version of IE I test against now is 8. The massive number of XP/IE6 users still out there are in China running a hacked version of XP. As I don't develop for the Chinese market this isn't a problem.
shazdeh 14y ago
IE team should just be SACKED as a WHOLE and Microsoft should get in a new Team. Surely by now everyone in the whole world knows that the IE team is the worst shortsighted incompitent bunch of idiots that exists. Unless of course the project manager is one of Bill Gates relatives. The posts the defend IE in any shape or form, are either simply LYING or should join the existing IE team. IE IS RUBBISH and if we all Stuck a banner NOT Supporting IE, the Web WILL become a better place for everyone.

122 points by bartj3 14y ago

Supporting IE isn't too much work. Trying to bend and twist WWW browsers to render something other than formatted-text-and-images-with-limited-interaction is too much work. You're bound to run into problems when treating document-display programs as ``platform''s.

evilvoidhamster 14y ago

the reason i bought a mac was to be able to test my work on all OS's. I thought that was a normal sensible thing todo (i.e. i can bootcamp and vm my way to full support)

omgmog 14y ago

It's not a lot of work to get a Windows/IE virtual environment up and running on a Mac, I use Virtualbox daily in combination with https://github.com/xdissent/ievms https://github.com/xdissent/ievms This shell script automatically downloads Windows virtual machine images from Microsoft, so that testing can be done in IE6/7/8/9. You don't even need to use separate machines, if you get a Windows 7 virtual machine set up you can use IE Tester to run IE5.5-9 http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage

doc4t 14y ago
It's actually much more work to test on a Mac when developing on a Windows machine since Apple is so protective of OS X that they don't allow it to run in a vm. Which is sad because I like to have all kinds of users but it's really really difficult to accommodate for all you guys browsing on a mac. Please hit me with hints to make life easier for myself if you have some...
- codesuela 14y ago
  but at least there is Safari for Windows
- chao- 14y ago
  Agreed. Not a single person in my company (a whole five people) owns a Mac, and it leaves us with no real options on the compatibility front. I prefer to develop in Linux, but I have a Windows partition since it's easy enough to do. But none of us have the pocket change lying around to buy a redundant machine just to check up on some demonstrably minimal segment of our users who use Safari on OS X. I'll put in the time to boot into a Windows partition and double-check IE9, but when it comes to OS X/Safari, I've got little recourse but to crossing my fingers and bank on Safari's Webkit rendering being the same as (or close enough to) Chrome in Windows and Chromium in Linux. Safari DOES have a Windows version, but I've never seen it enter into the conversation at all. Is it guaranteed to have true rendering/display parity with the OS X variant?
  - doc4t 14y ago
    "Is it guaranteed to have true rendering/display parity with the OS X variant?" No. Last time I made a hackintosh running Safari on Win and Mac sometimes produced different outcomes in certain scenarios. Things might have changed though.
  - zbuc 14y ago
    > I'll put in the time to boot into a Windows partition and double-check IE9, but when it comes to OS X/Safari, I've got little recourse but to crossing my fingers and bank on Safari's Webkit rendering being the same as (or close enough to) Chrome in Windows and Chromium in Linux. Might want to try the Windows version of Safari then. The JS engines in Chrome and Safari have some quirks between them and can behave differently in some scenarios, mostly things that JSLint would catch though.
- omgmog 14y ago
  If you can stomach it, there's Safari for Windows, Google Chrome should render the same across platforms, as should Firefox. The only thing you'd need a Mac for really is ensuring that your colors/contrast look good, and that fonts are readable (on account of the font hinting). The other option, of course, is to either buy a Mac, or build a Hackintosh.
  - stutter 14y ago
    Macs run Windows, Windows don't run OSX. This is why I develop on Mac; it's more versatile. (For web development)
    - untog 14y ago
      Well, that's one way of phrasing it. Microsoft allows you to run Windows in a virtual machine, Apple bans you from doing so. That's why I develop on a Mac; Apple forces me to.

axefrog 14y ago

I honestly think a lot of hacker types really do live in a bubble where they think it's still 2000, Microsoft is still the same evil company they were, Apple still can do no wrong, most people now use Macs "if they know what's good for them", RoR, node.js and Python are really the only valid technologies for back end development and so forth. Certainly plenty of folks out there using the aforementioned technologies are more worldly than my previous statement would suggest, but there are still an irritating number of developers living in the past who haven't really got a realistic view of the technology landscape as it exists today, in 2012. I also notice this on various high profile podcasts that from time to time downplay anything from Microsoft as having any value these days, despite not really having had recent first hand experience of what's available. I prefer Chrome myself, but supporting IE9 really isn't that hard, and suggesting otherwise is FUD. The landscape has changed in the last five years. Hopefully over time, especially as the landscape continues to change, the antifanboys will realise this and update their views.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
IE9 is not that bad. To prove to myself that it was not, I forced myself to use it as my main browser for a while. It was not painful at all. It had reasonable speed, and although lacking some CSS3 features that are nice, it is generally a decent browser. And it runs one of my Canvas demos much more smoothly than Chrome or Firefox, since it hardware accelerates canvas rendering.
- drhowarddrfine 14y ago
  IE9 is bad. Lacking CSS3 features is not "OK". Lacking WebGL is not "OK". The only reason it runs web sites to your satisfaction is due to the hard work of developers beating their heads against the wall to make IE9 perform correctly. IE is the worst browser on the planet and always will be.
- nadvorny 14y ago
  It's not that IE9 is bad. It's that IE is not only IE9. It's IE7,8,9 and 10. Testing on all IE versions takes as much time as testing on all other browsers. They all have their unique issues. And you can't run all of them on one machine safely. And you usually use IE7 as the least common denominator, thus sacrificing functionality.

5h 14y ago

I work neck deep with cross browser "stuff" frequently, frankly, IE9 is a breeze & imho Paydirt made themselves look really quite daft!

givan 14y ago

In some cases, not supporting IE is like a filter, if you offer a web service that involves some web tech background from users then it will save you some support hours, people that don't understand basic stuff like what a browser is can be a pain for support or probably would never signup either.

bartj3 14y ago
True, and that is probably the case for Paydirt, but there's a difference between not supporting and actively blocking. Less than 2% of Paydirt's visitors use IE, so dropping support is a logical choice. Maybe even display a warning to IE users but don't block them.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  You haven't given an actual reason why they shouldn't block IE users. Could you explain why that is?

pwaring 14y ago

As always, it depends on your audience. If 1% of your users have IE, then it may well be too much work to support it - although 8/9 are a massive improvement on 6/7. On the other hand, if you're in my position and run a site where 100% of the users have IE installed in a corporate environment (i.e. often an old version), support is never 'too much work'.

ry0ohki 14y ago

On that same note, if you don't have enough users to make IE worth supporting, you better have a product targeted at techies, because it does not have wide enough adoption yet among average people.

slig 14y ago

Did you guys forget what pain in the ass was a couple of years ago when IE was the most used browser everywhere? Seriously, f. Microsoft. Just because finally they made a decent browser, doesn't mean that we should be that grateful. Their business was "make a shitty browser while we can", and now that they can't anymore "ok, sorry guys, here's very nice browser, btw, it won't work on our most used OS version, even though every other browser works".

sgift 14y ago
"We" simply prefer to base our decisions on the current state of affairs, not on the way things where years ago. If your business requires you to support IE, do it. If not: don't. But please don't make it sound like you have some holy war to fight. Thanks.
- axefrog 14y ago
  ^ This.

ivanbernat 14y ago

It's time we separate "full-stack" developers from "front-end" and "back-end" guys / gals. I've met some brilliant folks who write amazing Ruby but say they hate CSS or JS. Those are "back-end" guys. A "front-end" person will write CSS and HTML markup without a problem and will always make sure it's cross-browser compatible. I've been coding front-end markup for 7 years now and I've never come across a IE-specific issue that took longer than 5 minutes to resolve, and 99% of the time my markup worked without any "hacks" at all. I'm talking about ~450 projects. So my advice to all the startups calling "not supporting IE a feature" to outsource their markup to a company that will do it right. Remember, 90% of the world ISN'T using a Mac or a *nix flavor (I'm personally on a Mac) and many of them have no idea they can choose a different browser. Saying NO to someone just because they use a browser you don't like is like going around and bashing people based on their sexual preferences or religious beliefs. F-it, I'm still on Firefox, which is now far behind Chrome, will you ban me access in a year? I keep telling startups, EDUCATE YOUR USERS. Put a banner and tell te to upgrade to IE9 or install Chrome Portable if they don't have the required permissions.

white_devil 14y ago
> I've never come across a IE-specific issue that took longer than 5 minutes to resolve, and 99% of the time my markup worked without any "hacks" at all. Now that's a flat-out lie right there.
- grabastic 14y ago
  Or it's the truth and his ~450 projects have been of low to medium css/js complexity. Or even high complexity and he got really, really, really lucky.
  - ivanbernat 14y ago
    I'd say 80% of all projects were done within 24hrs (standard delivery time) while other projects were 40-page multy-style apps (mostly custom "CRM" solutions). Heck, I even had requests do make the markup IE6-only.

skrebbel 14y ago

I really subscribe to the attitude in this post. We're developers, we're supposed to make decent software. Our users won't care whether it's our fault or somebody else's if the software doesn't work. Just like you don't go blaming the database if your app becomes slow, you shouldn't blame the browser for rendering your page wrong, even if you're right! Dammit, we're grown ups here. Make decent software! Test it! Automate the tests! Gracefully degrade! Yes, it's difficult, yes, it's costly! Get over it already! Either make a fancy web app that works, or just make it highly non-fancy (HN, anyone?) to avoid all the headache. Or go somewhere halfway, as long as you're in control.

robert_nsu 14y ago
I agree. Or at the very least, identify what your users are using (in my case IE9 and webkit via iOS) and test accordingly. Granted I am only making things for internal consumption among a very small pool of users, but still If I decided to only test for Safari and Chrome, I need my teeth kicked in for being lazy.
vbigham 14y ago
Absolutely. IE still has tons of users in the world, and it seems a joke to not invite them to the party. It doesn't really bother me as much if they change the features per browser platform, but when you visit a site and it browser sniffs and comes back with a blanket message "Browser not supported please upgrade." that's when I know that the dev is a lazy piece of shit. They don't even bother to try to let it degrade so that people can still access the content, they just shut it off. Rediculous and immature is what this is, why would you put effort into being such a hater especially when its your customers that are being stopped? I suggest that we windows users boycott the sites that simply block IE. If it removes features I would skip it as well. Not supporting IE shows a lack of commitment to your users. As a user, I object to such half-assed notions. Its already bad enough with the entire dev community telling their users what they must do and how they must act. There is really no reason to be blocking IE10 at this point (yes I've seen it and was shocked and amazed that the fool would actually do that).

jan_g 14y ago

>Testing in IE is too much works… because they’re on a Mac. To be honest, lots of companies use similar excuses. We won't make/support our product X on platform Z, because the user base is too small, we don't have the hardware, developers are all on platform Y, etc. And generally speaking (no reference to paydirt example) it is in fact true, there are companies without a single windows machine. Unimaginable 5-10 years ago, but reality today.

gaius 14y ago

I think a general problem with "webdevs" is they have "year zero" mentality - anything prior to the release of their favourite framework, didn't really exist, and if they do acknowledge its existence, it's only to observe how worthless it is. It's almost religious in nature. You see this in particular in the Ruby world where they are forever reinventing the wheel, but it's certainly not limited to them. IE6, because I am old, and remember, was the first browser that you could build real applications with desktop feel in (e.g. Outlook Web Access). Lots of in-house developers jumped on it, and wrote millions of lines of code. You might think it's too much work to support IE6; they think it's too much work with too little reward to rewrite everything in whatever's trendy this week, because it basically does what their users need and they have real, actual work to do.

valuegram 14y ago
>> anything prior to the release of their favourite framework, didn't really exist, and if they do acknowledge its existence, it's only to observe how worthless it is. It's almost religious in nature. For me at least, its not about religion but economics. Writing standards compliant code that works in all modern browsers costs a certain amount. Writing standard compliant code that is also backwards compatible with older technologies and legacy browsers may cost significantly more. The cost is one issue, of course the larger program is the value. Legacy browsers like IE6&7 compose slightly over 3% of the market share last month. Without even getting into the demographics of those people, it often isn't worth it to tweak for those specific cases. That being said, I always leave it up to the customer. This is the issue in the browsers, here is your traffic effected, this is what it would cost to fix. I can see the agitation with IE6&7, but the newer releases have gotten much better. For the most part, something I develop mainly in FireFox works fine in the newer IE releases.
driverdan 14y ago
Software is a depreciating asset with a finite life. This is something you need to take into account whether it's writing something for Windows 3.1 or the web. Maintaining, updating, and migrating is part of the lifecycle.
fellowniusmonk 14y ago

bwm 14y ago

I think it depends on how far along you are in your product development lifecycle. If you're at the MVP stage or you're making big changes to your product regularly, then don't support IE, it'll slow iteration time in a similar (although not to the same extent) way that launching with an iPhone and Android app would. If you've got product market fit, paying users and have the bandwidth to support it then you probably should.

PeterisP 14y ago

I can second that. Forget about IE - there are differences even for Safari/MacOS and Safari/Windows, so if you are testing only on MacOS then you aren't doing it well.

xutopia 14y ago

Supporting IE can be too much work. The Microsoft Knowledge base acknowledges issues and then tells you that the solution is to change your IE options or upgrade your browser. As if that will help with my users. Sure the latest versions of IE are not as painful to support but if you check worldwide statistics you'll notice that old versions of IE are still sticking around.

rahx 14y ago
so is your problem with ie or ignorant users?

stutter 14y ago

You don't have comments on your blog, so I'll comment here: IE testing is "hard" on a Mac because of the vm requirement, yes. However, that's not even my main issue. If Microsoft facilitated having VMs of each windows installation + browser version available for that OS to developers, it'd still be "hard" but at least they'd be helping. IE only runs on Windows, so if you want to test for Windows you have a bunch of sub-par options, or really expensive options, or..illegal options, pick your poison. That's not even my biggest complaint about it, though. I have two main complaints. First, the development tools available to Internet Explorer are absolute butt hole. Javascript is considered a second class citizen, and is nearly impossible to debug efficiently. The amount of "oh lets try this for shits and giggles" that is required, to see if it will fix a random IE issue is absolutely astounding. I typically find my solutions to IE issues by complete accident, and upon reflection say to myself "well..that's the most stupid thing I could have thought of - so no wonder that works." Not simple, stupid. It feels like Microsoft deliberately takes the stance of making it HARD to develop software for Internet Explorer. I don't know if this is purposely their philosophy but maybe they're diluted enough to think it helps turn out higher quality applications. It doesn't, what it produces is a horrible user experience designed for the lowest-common denominator. And the worst part about it is that most of your end-users use IE. So, what it results in is crappy, old feeling, slow web applications and an influx of user complaints about things not working or taking too long (because the javascript engine is about as slow as the Ruby interpreter). Second, the IE user base is so incredibly fragmented across versions. And it's not like the difference between chrome 13 and chrome 18 where some css3 features don't work, or websockets is slow, or whatever. The difference is that entire feature sets are missing, or work differently. In one version CSS box width includes margin and in the next, it doesn't. That's a pretty significant change; it completely ruins the entire flow of your site and you have to account for "special" cases of old browsers. Except, your "special cases" of old browsers are 30% of the internet population. Supporting IE is a time sink, but not just because it's "hard" to set up Windows environments, but because Microsoft actively tries to make it hard for developers to code, test, and debug applications in Internet Explorer. Or doesn't make an effort to alleviate the pain; either way it's active effort in creating more suck, imo. Disclaimers: I've been developing on Mac for 4 years and haven't used Internet Explorer as an every-day browser in 7 years. IE8 made some improvements to JS debugging (SOME) and is vastly better than 6 and 7. IE9 might be amazing, and IE10 might be the best browser in the world - I don't know. All I know is that debugging IE takes almost as long as building the application did in the first place. Until that problem is solved, IE will still suck and still get a lot of hate from the development community. Microsoft has a giant mountain to climb to get their reputation back to "neutral" in the web development community.

nirvdrum 14y ago

While I agree that supporting multiple browsers & devices is a PITA, we as an industry are still employing some mindnumbingly bad testing practices. There are a lot of solid testing products out there that ease the pain. Testing as a service has made cross-browser testing simple and cheap the way hosted services have for all sorts of other problems. Obviously I have a real interest in this, given I'm a Selenium dev and I started one of these testing as a service companies, but that really was a result of wanting to ease the pain. I highly recommend checking out Sauce Labs for functional testing and Mogotest (my aforementioned company) for render-level testing. Both beat the crap out of running a bunch of VMs and manually testing (although falling back to the VM to fix something may make sense).

rahx 14y ago

"Your main job is development, not being a hipster." right on!

grampajoe 14y ago

It doesn't matter whether you agree with a company's technical choices, whether it's Paydirt, Microsoft, or anyone else. If you don't like their choices, you're free to not use their software.

PaulHoule 14y ago

It's pretty funny... Back in 2003 I worked at a place which couldn't test software on Macs because they had an exclusive procurement contract with Dell. As things turned out, I bought my first Mac, with my own money, so I could do this kind of testing. Now today, Macbook Pros are the fashionable thing west coast developers use -- they are pretty nice machines. Except for the fact that they can only be loaded with 8 GB of RAM and for the kind of work I do, that's not enough. So instead of being able to do the work on your local machine and have no problems with VPN, debuggers, and all that, you need to rent a machine that's $8000 a year in AWS and you don't get the benefit of turning it off when you don't need it because the Ops guy is involved with turning it on and off and god forbid another dev wants to use it and its turned off...

eropple 14y ago
> Now today, Macbook Pros are the fashionable thing west coast developers use -- they are pretty nice machines. Except for the fact that they can only be loaded with 8 GB of RAM and for the kind of work I do, that's not enough. All 15" MBPs from Early 2011 onward support 16GB of RAM. It's not documented, but they do.

icodeforlove 14y ago

I can understand not supporting anything <IE9 but it currently doesn't make sense to target away from a browser that follows majority of the standards. Microsoft has already said sorry for the shitty browsers in the past and they have done a pretty good job with creating IE9 (minus the compatibility mode). I find just as many bugs in Chrome/Safari/Firefox as i do in IE9.

doc4t 14y ago

Since so many are complaining about the difficulty of developing/debugging in IE here is a couple of links that should make it easier for you Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=18359 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1835... VPC Images for XP/IE6, Vista/IE7, Win7/IE8, Win7/IE9 - you can import the images to VMware and VirtualBox http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11575 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1157... MS Script Debugger and how to http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2004/10/26/247912.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2004/10/26/247912.aspx Detecting Memory Leaks http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2007/11/29/tools-for-detecting-memory-leaks.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2007/11/29/tools-for-dete... VS Express (free) http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/express http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-ed... Firebug Lite http://getfirebug.com/firebuglite http://getfirebug.com/firebuglite I'm sure there are more some where...

xutopia 14y ago
I prefer the ISO than the images for Windows 8 Consumer Preview => http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows-8/iso http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows-8/iso
NelsonMinar 14y ago
Microsoft's virtual machine images work great in VirtualBox. It's a bit of a PITA setting them up manually, but it's very easy with the installer shell script at https://github.com/xdissent/ievms#readme https://github.com/xdissent/ievms#readme
vbigham 14y ago
Props for posting these! Now we need to turn this list into blog posts.

chris_wot 14y ago

Interesting. I created a javascript module that emulates an ActiveX control. It needs to parse binary data sent from the web server. I actually got it working in Opera, Firefox, Chrome and Safari via JDataView, which parses the binary data via a string. However, it doesn't work in Internet Explorer because IE will not read past a zero byte (null character). The data is actually there, you can see it in the debugger, but it won't let you get to it. This behaviour isn't mandated by the ECMA spec, and all other browsers handle it fine. You can do a massive VBScript hack, which may stop working at any time. I decided that I'd not support Internet Explorer because I can't use it - even in IE9 and 10. Call me lazy if you like - I don't care. I'm not hacking up VBscript to get around a crazy Microsoft Javascript string processing decision!

untog 14y ago
Holy edge case, batman! I get what you're saying, but no-one in this discussion is trying to emulate ActiveX controls, just make a web site. And recent versions of IE really aren't that bad for it.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Actually, that was my use case. Quite a few people are using jdataview for other interesting applications. I was merely explaining what I was trying to do, sure it's an edge case but it's actually an example of where Microsoft don't follow the ECMA standard. Not sure why the post was voted down. I think the fact that Microsoft aren't following the ECMA standard for string processing is actually a fairly egregious example of why it's just not worthwhile in many instances to develop for IE.

drewmclellan 14y ago

Testing in different browsers is a real pain. Getting front end code working properly in all those different browsers is even more of a pain. Getting that code working really well is harder still. It takes time, dedication, skill, and a lot of specialist knowledge of bugs, quirks, standards and tools. That's the reason that front end development is a role in its own right, and not just a function of someone else's role.

S_A_P 14y ago

I cant see how anyone could say it is too difficult to test windows on a mac. Bootcamp serves exactly that purpose, and you can use windows on a nice piece of hardware. IMHO, developers are payed a higher than average salary, precisely because it can be hard. If everyone could do it, there would be no reason to pay more. Having built some web apps in my day, I get that its a pain in the ass to support IE 6, 7 and to some degree 8. There may even be a reasonable use case where not allowing a feature on a certain browser version is reasonable. I didnt, however, see a compelling argument made by Paydirt to that effect.

frankiejr 14y ago

It's sad to see otherwise talented developers focusing on the process more than the product, and putting their craft above the user experience. After all, it's all about the users. Doing good work and making excuses don't mix. If you use any excuse not to test on any browsers in any Windows environments, you're ignoring the fact that the vast majority of users are on the Windows platform -- ~90% worldwide, ~81% in the US. I'm talking OS, not browser. (If you think there's not much difference, try borrowing a Windows machine and viewing the way most @font-face rendering works on that platform.) And if you prescribe to the thought "my users are mostly on Mac," your growth will be severely limited if you're ignoring 80-90% of the users out there. Development & testing are two separate tasks. Don't confuse their respective toolsets.

talmand 14y ago

As a front-end developer who attempts to keep up with the latest and greatest in my industry, I have to say that there does seem to be some sort of bubble with people on their Macs. Too many times I've seen documentation that assumes that everybody is on a Mac. Too many times I've seen demos that assumes that everybody is on a Mac. Too many times that software that can easily be cross-platform are not or they don't document it as such. Too many times I've seen comments that say if you aren't developing on a Mac then they heavily imply you're a loser. Much of that also assumes that everyone has an iPhone or an iPad. For instance, why is getting Phonegap up and running on a Windows machine such a tragic pain in the ass? I got it going on my laptop to play with and after that experience I'm considering putting "successfully installed Phonegap on a Windows machine" on my resume and LinkedIn profile. I may be missing something but even the Windows install documentation I've seen on their website is several versions behind the current release. As a counter, getting SASS running on my Windows machine was a breeze in comparison. Now, if it's software and you only want to develop it for OSX, that's cool. But if it's a simple tool that can easily run cross-platform, then don't pretend it doesn't. It's like the complaints about webkit only prefixes on so much stuff on Github, I'm willing to bet it's because of Mac people not caring about every other browser/OS out there. That's a guess, nothing to back that up. Most of the people who complain about developing for IE being difficult seem to be Mac people and more than likely have no idea what they're talking about. With my job I support gecko, webkit, and IE7+. Until recently that included IE6. I do not use hacks unless I absolutely have to and I avoid using IE-only style sheets. IT IS NOT THAT HARD! If you think supporting modern versions of IE is too hard then you may need to reconsider your workflow as it's probably the problem. It is your job to support all the browsers your customers use despite your personal feelings on the matter. Of course, if the browser use is below a certain percentage you're comfortable with, then by all means go for it. I do. I develop on a Windows machine because our platform is based on .Net. We have two Macs in the office that two of our designers prefer. If need be I can ask them to look at something for me. I personally do not develop for nor test for Safari on OSX so I have no idea of all the differences and challenges of developing for it. But I sure as hell don't say it's too hard to bother with.

fellowniusmonk 14y ago
When you run your own site your job is to do whatever you want, however you want, it's your chance to be opinionated and exclusionary, and as long as you are not begging me to invest money, more power to you. Also open source and sharing is more robust on linux and posix platforms, so people naturally develop tools they can use on their own platform, with their own workflow, and who cares if it gets ported to windows, I'm not creating a product to sell, I am sharing my personal toolset in a friendly way. Why are you complaining about the difficulty of installing a FREE opensource project on a platform that is not native to the Devs? Of course it's more difficult! Why are you complaining so loudly? Why are your expectation so entitled? Did you even bother asking for help on Stackoverflow?

e_proxus 14y ago

Windows 7 Proffesional: $249 VirtualBox: Free --- Total cost to run IE under Mac: $249 Is it really that hard?

masklinn 14y ago
> Windows 7 Proffesional: $249 Why would you do that? http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11575 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1157...

pudakai 14y ago

First, I tend to agree that the Microsoft bashing is a little overdone. They've been moving forward legacy code for a product that now is by far the oldest browser in the field while at the same time having to support an obviously enormous user base. They've made their cost vs. timeliness vs. goodness decisions as is their right to do so. We make the same decisions about IE compatibility work. Being a very early stage startup, we figure two things: 1) The field of IE users has a lower percentage (and perhaps absolute number) of potential early adopters. For our app, this is a dead certainty, although it is not necessarily so for other apps. 2) IE users, who aren't constantly comparing how a site looks in IE against how it looks in other browsers, are accustomed to things being a little off from time to time. This is their IE world. So our acceptance level at this stage is does everything work and does it look basically ok in IE. We don't sweat a lot of the finer stuff, again, figuring most of the the IE users are in a world where things are off by a few pixels here and there and don't get too upset by it. If they did, they'd be on the other browsers, where the sun shines a little brighter and the birds sing a little sweeter for all websites. That is the important point to remember - browser type users are self-selecting in their tolerance for UX hiccups.

jayferd 14y ago

FWIW, as a Linux user I have the same problem with Safari. But thankfully it uses the same rendering engine as Chrome, so I can be relatively sure that if it works in one, it works in the other. IE is another can of worms.

sil3ntmac 14y ago

ievms dude, ievms. https://github.com/xdissent/ievms https://github.com/xdissent/ievms

leephillips 14y ago

If you use these two free tools, your days of developing "for" particular browsers will be over: http://validator.w3.org/ http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

jacquesm 14y ago

For the record, I hate IE with a passion. But look at it this way: If you purposefully ignore a segment of the market you open yourself up to attack. Better have that cost-benefit worked out, too much work probably isn't a good excuse at any scale that matters. If you're just playing around then fine, go for it. But if you're playing for keeps then be very careful with decisions like these. You'll be on your high horse over there telling people to upgrade or gtfo, meanwhile I'll be over here making off with a very large chunk of your potential userbase and everybody they pull along. That adds up, and if you're not careful it will add up to business failure. Ignore your potential users at your peril.

akmiller 14y ago

One thing, many of these anti-IE articles seem to ignore is business outside of the United States. We are a global business and China's most popular browser (at least with users hitting our site) seems to be Maxthon which is based on the Trident rendering engine (which of course is what IE uses). This makes it nearly impossible for us to ever consider cutting off IE support unless we wanted to neglect one of our largest growing user-bases in the world. Make sure you seriously consider which parts of the world your app could potentially be used in and do the research to find out what browsers they use in that area.

RandallBrown 14y ago

The web is a platform like any other. Supporting IE takes testing and development time and more importantly SUPPORT time. So why block IE users and not just let them fend for themselves since you don't "support" it? Because you're still going to get people trying to use your site in IE. They're going to send you support emails and they're going to complain to people about your shitty app not working. That costs time, money, and reputation.

giardini 14y ago

IMO part of Microsoft's strategic view is that any developer time spent on non-Microsoft technology is bad, so they saturate the developer with Microsoft-specific requirements and deviations from otherwise well-established standards. Microsoft's proprietary software development products (Visual Studio, .NET, etc.) present the developer with complex non-standard terminologies, languages, categories and specifications unique to Microsoft tools and platforms. In the more open sphere of the WWW where Microsoft has at times dominated the market, the same strategy applies: inundate web developers with deviations from the standards and with Microsoft-specific "innovations". It works as long as Microsoft has a large share of the market because you simply cannot ignore their presence. In the end, much, if not most, of your time is used up supporting Microsoft's idiosyncracies, leaving less time for alternatives.

JangoSteve 14y ago

I agree with the point in general, but for one subtle detail: What shocked me even more is the amount of comments saying that “supporting IE is too much work”, not because it still costs the crazy amount of time it used to (ie6), but because they’re developing on a Mac. No, it's not that it's difficult on a Mac. It's that it's difficult on a [not Windows]. Subtle difference, but undermines much of the "grow up" point of the article. You're saying developers are whining because Microsoft doesn't support their operating system of choice. But that's incorrect, they're whining because MS doesn't support anyone's operating system but their own. And even if it was simply that you can't easily debug IE on a Mac, the fact of the matter is, all the other major browsers allow it. Who cares if it's unreasonable to ask Microsoft to provide us a build for easy use and debugging? Every other vendor (i.e. competitor) does it at the exact same price point: $0. If IE lacks this "feature" at the same price point as the competitors, then I say deciding not to support IE is fair game (though I wouldn't personally exclude IE for anything other than a toy side project).

rglover 14y ago

If I had to guess, I'd say that most of the complaints don't involve layout issues but rather, support of newer features in HTML5 and CSS3. That being said, there are plenty of (easy) fixes and workarounds that take care of most problems. Is it frustrating? Yup. But like the article says, it just comes with the territory. For newer front-end devs, I'd recommend dedicating a few days familiarizing yourself with the various bugs, fixes, and tools for testing. That alone will ease the pain. Just takes time like anything else. Chin up, sport.

jamespcole2 14y ago

I generally don't bother supporting anything lower than IE8. If you want to use my app and are using an old version of IE just download chrome, it's free, otherwise don't use the app. I have used only Linux for about the last five years but i do test in IE using VirtualBox and the free VHD's provided by Microsoft(thanks guys). I don't mind using the VM approach but the thing that annoys me is the massive size of the VHD files. My Ubuntu install is only about 3GB but each windows VM is around 16GB - 16GB!!! Considering I need a separate VM for every version of IE I want to test and I am using 128GB SSD's in my laptop and Desktop most of my disk space is taken up with having VM's to test IE. That being said I think it's worth supporting newer versions of IE but I always display a message to users recommending they get a better browser, I think the more people we can get away from using IE the better because while IE10 might be ok now i just don't trust MS ability to update it in the future and i worry that in 10 years we'll all be bitching about IE10 the way we bitch about IE6 now because millions of users will still be running out of date browsers because of the poor update path for IE.

geoffvader 14y ago

Wow. I can't believe what I'm seeing here. "Development isn't easy so we're not gonna bother". Jesus, lets hope the people looking for a cure for cancer don't give up that easily. Here's a tip. Open IE9 and press F12. It lets you go to IE 7 and 8, in quirks and standards mode. Now that wasn't hard was it? Most internet users use IE. If your clients are happy not to support them then good for you. But most of mine would like people to be able to see their website!!!

satovey 14y ago

"It’s expensive getting hardware to test on, taking time to test it, making sure you have a windows installation" I infer two inferences from the above quote: Inference 1. The individual is either a non paid, or poorly paid developer, Inference 2.That developing on a mac is not as financially rewarding as developing on a PC. Why else would it be to costly to purchase an off the shelf PC from Walmart for $500.00 for the purpose of testing IE 9?

md8n 14y ago

Thanks for your rant Bart and I'd largely have to agree. If you want pixel-perfect equality between all browsers then supporting IE6 is truly a pain. Why anyone would want pixel-perfect equality is beyond me though because the end-users simply don't care. The real argument for the stuff I've worked on wasn't IE vs. the rest, it was HTML4-ish (IE 6,7,8) vs HTML5 (IE9, FF, Chrome, Safari, Opera). Even then using jQuery + Knockout on the client side solved nearly every compatibility problem. There was also an actual advantage with testing against older versions of IE as it enabled us to identify weird performance and behavioural problems earlier. When we ignored a given problem in IE6,7,8 during the development phase the same problem would turn up later in all of the other browsers when the system was under load. Fixing the problem for IE6,7,8 got us a massive jump on fixing the problem for all of the other browsers. Personally for my own stuff the oldest version of IE I test against now is 8. The massive number of XP/IE6 users still out there are in China running a hacked version of XP. As I don't develop for the Chinese market this isn't a problem.

shazdeh 14y ago

IE team should just be SACKED as a WHOLE and Microsoft should get in a new Team. Surely by now everyone in the whole world knows that the IE team is the worst shortsighted incompitent bunch of idiots that exists. Unless of course the project manager is one of Bill Gates relatives. The posts the defend IE in any shape or form, are either simply LYING or should join the existing IE team. IE IS RUBBISH and if we all Stuck a banner NOT Supporting IE, the Web WILL become a better place for everyone.