5 ms·

30% cost to support 70% of your userbase seems like a win to me. This is only an issue for developers who target Firefox initially. That's the wrong way to go

30% cost to support 70% of your userbase seems like a win to me. This is only an issue for developers who target Firefox initially. That's the wrong way to go about web development. Run IE7 on your dev box and build everything against it. That's what your users will have, so that should be your first priority. Step two is making it work for FF. The added benefit to that approach is that you'll find less cross platform issues. Going from IE -> Firefox is a lot easier than the other way around.

fdb 18y ago
Are you kidding? Developing for a crappy browser first is the perfect recipe for an unmaintainable mess of code, since you will be relying on hacks to get IE to do render correctly, then adding hacks again for every browser that does the right thing. First develop for a standards-compliant browser, then add (conditional) hacks to support IE. The other way around is just silly.
- feverishaaron 18y ago
  I think we posted this at almost the exact same time. Awesome.
feverishaaron 18y ago
I disagree. IE is the moving target. If you want maintainable code, it is best to build to standards, then hack to IE with conditionals.
- jasonkester 18y ago
  IE has had the same box model since 1995. It is, and always has been the standard. If you recall, Netscape used that same box model until version 6. So if you'd like to look for a point where standards were broken, look to W3C and Mozilla. It's certainly not Microsoft's fault that the "standards" organization decided to change the fundamental way things are rendered in a browser.
  - noblethrasher 18y ago
    Not to mention that IE's box-model (in quirks-mode) is actually sane compared to the W3C standard. see : http://books.google.com/books?id=ZCPWYFoWaMIC&pg=PA289&lpg=PA289&dq=zeldman+IE+box+model+%22not+stupid%22&source=bl&ots=VjC-jyWNxb&sig=n1-vqSMf8yNCAaiUGRLN8VPv01E&hl=en&ei=S5StSZzqOYzRnQfuoMS8Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA289,M1 http://books.google.com/books?id=ZCPWYFoWaMIC&pg=PA289&#...
  - bdotdub 18y ago
    Just because it's older doesn't mean that it should be the standard. "Standards organizations" are there for a reason, so that issues like this wouldn't be so egregrious. Microsoft has had a while to fix it, and 8 years later far too many people are still using an old deprecated browser.
SystemOut 18y ago
But IE6 isn't 70% of your userbase. Maybe 70% of your userbase is IE but only maybe 20-25% of that is IE6 so spending 30% more time/resources on IE6 is what I would call a major fail. But hey, that's just me. And have you ever tried to develop complex ui sites on IE? I'm sorry...it just sucks and there is no good way around that. And I'm someone who knows IE6/7 quirks pretty good. Their script debuggers are utter crap and their developer toolbar is the most ancient thing out there. At least in IE8 they are copying Firebug...at that point it might not suck as much but who knows until I use it a while.
- jasonkester 18y ago
  Yes. I developed the most complex UI site I've ever seen, Twiddla, on IE first followed by Firefox. I never understood all the IE hate, to be honest. Until Chrome came out, I used IE7 as my daily browser. It's just better than Firefox in my opinion.
  - sam_in_nyc 18y ago
    Voted up for developing Twiddla for IE. I share your sentiment.. I develop against IE first then test it against the "good" browsers... which rarely screw it up. IE sucks for script debugging.. I mean EPIC suck. You're not even told what line of what file is screwed up (IE seems to concatenate everything into 1 file when giving the error report), but I've learned to rely on myself not to make common scripting mistakes, and created a cross-browser "console" object to aid in debugging. Safari has the worst script debugging on the planet. It essentially tells you whether or not there was an error. Oh, wait... and how many errors, total. Thanks, Safari!
    - jasonkester 18y ago
      Get VS.NET, and suddenly IE has the best script debugging around. Firebug rocks and all, but VS.NET will drop you into a breakpoint will a full call stack, watch, step thru, etc. It's a proper debugger. And yeah, it takes about the same level of effort to develop against IE as it does against FF. The advantage is that your stuff generally then works right in Firefox first try.

fdb 18y ago

Are you kidding? Developing for a crappy browser first is the perfect recipe for an unmaintainable mess of code, since you will be relying on hacks to get IE to do render correctly, then adding hacks again for every browser that does the right thing. First develop for a standards-compliant browser, then add (conditional) hacks to support IE. The other way around is just silly.

feverishaaron 18y ago
I think we posted this at almost the exact same time. Awesome.

feverishaaron 18y ago

I disagree. IE is the moving target. If you want maintainable code, it is best to build to standards, then hack to IE with conditionals.

jasonkester 18y ago
IE has had the same box model since 1995. It is, and always has been the standard. If you recall, Netscape used that same box model until version 6. So if you'd like to look for a point where standards were broken, look to W3C and Mozilla. It's certainly not Microsoft's fault that the "standards" organization decided to change the fundamental way things are rendered in a browser.
- noblethrasher 18y ago
  Not to mention that IE's box-model (in quirks-mode) is actually sane compared to the W3C standard. see : http://books.google.com/books?id=ZCPWYFoWaMIC&pg=PA289&lpg=PA289&dq=zeldman+IE+box+model+%22not+stupid%22&source=bl&ots=VjC-jyWNxb&sig=n1-vqSMf8yNCAaiUGRLN8VPv01E&hl=en&ei=S5StSZzqOYzRnQfuoMS8Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA289,M1 http://books.google.com/books?id=ZCPWYFoWaMIC&pg=PA289&#...
- bdotdub 18y ago
  Just because it's older doesn't mean that it should be the standard. "Standards organizations" are there for a reason, so that issues like this wouldn't be so egregrious. Microsoft has had a while to fix it, and 8 years later far too many people are still using an old deprecated browser.

SystemOut 18y ago

But IE6 isn't 70% of your userbase. Maybe 70% of your userbase is IE but only maybe 20-25% of that is IE6 so spending 30% more time/resources on IE6 is what I would call a major fail. But hey, that's just me. And have you ever tried to develop complex ui sites on IE? I'm sorry...it just sucks and there is no good way around that. And I'm someone who knows IE6/7 quirks pretty good. Their script debuggers are utter crap and their developer toolbar is the most ancient thing out there. At least in IE8 they are copying Firebug...at that point it might not suck as much but who knows until I use it a while.

jasonkester 18y ago
Yes. I developed the most complex UI site I've ever seen, Twiddla, on IE first followed by Firefox. I never understood all the IE hate, to be honest. Until Chrome came out, I used IE7 as my daily browser. It's just better than Firefox in my opinion.
- sam_in_nyc 18y ago
  Voted up for developing Twiddla for IE. I share your sentiment.. I develop against IE first then test it against the "good" browsers... which rarely screw it up. IE sucks for script debugging.. I mean EPIC suck. You're not even told what line of what file is screwed up (IE seems to concatenate everything into 1 file when giving the error report), but I've learned to rely on myself not to make common scripting mistakes, and created a cross-browser "console" object to aid in debugging. Safari has the worst script debugging on the planet. It essentially tells you whether or not there was an error. Oh, wait... and how many errors, total. Thanks, Safari!
  - jasonkester 18y ago
    Get VS.NET, and suddenly IE has the best script debugging around. Firebug rocks and all, but VS.NET will drop you into a breakpoint will a full call stack, watch, step thru, etc. It's a proper debugger. And yeah, it takes about the same level of effort to develop against IE as it does against FF. The advantage is that your stuff generally then works right in Firefox first try.