6 ms·

IE6 Must Die (along with 7 and 8)

64 points by audionerd 17y ago

pmichaud 17y ago
I thought this was link bait, but he makes a compelling argument.
- warfangle 17y ago
  He does, but fuchsia background colors on :hover makes it aggravating to read. Thank goodness for being able to disable stylesheets..
  - audionerd 17y ago
    or the Readability bookmarklet :) http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
    - warfangle 17y ago
      This is amazing. Thank you!!
9oliYQjP 17y ago
I recently prototyped a site using CSS that only Safari 3+ and FireFox 3+ could understand. I never loaded IE up once while doing it. Boy was it a pleasure being able to have a CSS stylesheet declare rounded borders with one declaration. The problem with supporting IE at all is that so few (almost none) of the CSS functionality that eliminates hacks we've been working with are available. Even IE8 isn't enough. So choosing to support IE at all means intentionally refusing to adopt features supported by Safari and FireFox. That is, unless you want an inconsistent experience for your users. But why do we have to provide a perfectly consistent experience between desktop browsers?I'm starting to think that this is precisely what we should do to force MS to get with the times. Let your site degrade for IE in ways that do not break core functionality or fundamental design requirements. When users start figuring out that they can't see a prettier version of NYTimes because IE doesn't support @font-face, rounded corners, CSS transformations, and other advanced CSS functionality, many will decide to switch. The difference between this approach now and how it was implemented in the 90s during the Netscape/IE wars, is that it's a best practice to degrade gracefully but retain important functionality now. The criticism of this strategy back then is that many sites simply did not work at all in one browser or the other. That would be unacceptable.
- Elessar 17y ago
  It's generally not possible at a business-level to treat IE users as second-class citizens. So while your idea appeals to anyone who has ever done webapp development, it's not conducive to business interests. After all, there's always another website looking to take the users that you're not willing to fully support.
  - 9oliYQjP 17y ago
    But it's not about refusing to support them completely. Also, the difference between trying this strategy today and even 2 years ago is that CSS now has features that would be compelling to end users rather than just developers. Users couldn't care less if developers want to use Safari/FireFox/IE8 because they support display: table. But users are becoming more demanding in terms of user experience and as they realize that the alternative browsers let them have nicer typography and cool desktop-like animations/transitions they will begin to demand this kind of thing. For a while, some die-hards will probably try to use Flash to mimic the experience that HTML5 and these new CSS features offer. But I think the uptake of Flash amongst new developers is less than that of standards-based practices. Simply by virtue of having more developers supporting the standards based approach, I think Flash will eventually be eclipsed until it is relegated to a niche, kind of like how Google Maps is everywhere now and MapQuest is dying. There is this big assumption that users are resistant to change. I'm inclined to believe they're resistant to unnecessary change. We just need to make them feel compelled to change and users will do so. For the first time in a while, Safari and FireFox actually have compelling features to users that IE does not. That changes the landscape quite a bit.
    - thismat 17y ago
      So, when you argue with your client over this specification for hours, and they decide to give the job to someone who will make it consistent, then what? From a business point of view, especially in the marketing world, you'll have a hard time compelling the every day firm to ditch IE support. And as I said in the previous thread about this same exact thing, the elites can do it and still get plenty of business, but is everyone in the position to be able to turn down a job because of this? The answer is probably no. EDIT: I guess the real issue is more along the lines of an education issue, and people who don't grasp it, getting put in charge of whatever new micro-marketing site you're releasing this quarter.
rjurney 17y ago
Anti-trust had no teeth last decade because of the 'privatization is good, private enterprise can do no wrong' economic orgy that just came crashing down, and as a result IE has held the internet back a decade. Just THINK of where we would be if Netscape had won. The political climate has shifted in the wake of the housing crisis, so... could a class action suit have some teeth? Think of all the money lost in fixing IE-specific bugs that only exist because Microsoft used its monopoly to shove an inferior browser onto every desktop, and then refused to put resources into developing it, to ensure they continued to make money on rich client applications and their operating system. Think of the cumulative cost of fixing IE bugs across our entire economy. Microsoft owes the American people billions for IE. I want a class action suit against them. There are IE-specific bug billing records that surely amount to billions of dollars at companies across America. Companies would line up with invoices to web developers to join the suit. Microsoft owes us all money. They must be stopped, and they must pay.
- rjurney 17y ago
  I'm pretty surprised at the negative karma. How can you all feel anything but outrage about IE? Have you not delt with its bugs for a decade? Do you think this was accidental?
- req2 17y ago
  "I made the perfect accessory, but it only works with electric cars. GM abused their car monopoly to make gas engines, not electric engines, costing me money. GM owes us all money. GM must be stopped, and GM must pay." (I'll also note that you didn't give Microsoft any money when IE helped you make money, and they're not your insurance policy when you don't make money, either.)
  - rjurney 17y ago
    GM doesn't have a car monopoly. The monopoly is why what I said makes sense, and what you said does not.
    - req2 17y ago
youngian 17y ago
How depressing. I think we all knew this deep down, but he puts it very eloquently. IE will always be holding the web back, at least for the entire forseeable future. Even as a lifelong cynic, this still bummed me out.
rbritton 17y ago
Subsequent versions of IE have gotten dramatically better, but the time delta between versions is too long. From its wikipedia page: IE5: September 1997 IE6: August 2001 (+4 years) IE7: October 2006 (+9 years) IE8: March 2009 (+11.5 years) Safari, Firefox, et al do not have a similar lag and have been able to implement newer standards much more quickly. WebKit, for example, is in active development, and the version of the framework in use by Safari is updated fairly regularly.
rimantas 17y ago
It does, albeit too slow. According to our ranking site http://ranking.lt/ http://ranking.lt/ IE share felt below 50% for the first time. One should have in mind, that this is not stats from some geek/webdev site, but collected by online advertising company, so it is even more likely that the stats are skewed in favor of IE.
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if IE6 outlasted IE7 as all the people who could upgrade from IE6 (not locked down corporate machines that need to access outdated intranet sites) have no reason to stay on IE7 either. In that respect I think and hope he's wrong. If anyone's writing internal business apps today that will only ever work on one version of one browser then they should be taken out and shot.
TravisLS 17y ago
I don't really agree with this assessment. With the release of IE8, we also saw the browser upgrade coming through automatic windows updates. IE will eventually probably accept this as much as safari and firefox, thereby keeping most users up to speed.
jdavid 17y ago
you should support IE6 as a separate product, and via a separate feature timeline. if you can launch a web app for browsers that are modern and relevant in 4 weeks, and doing it for IE takes an additional 2-4 weeks, why wait to launch those features for a broken browsers, support and reward users with current browsers by giving them 1st access to new features. supporting IE6 on a different roadmap means you can do ROI on each feature, and if IE6 is to expensive to develop a feature for, then...... gasp... you can just skip it.

64 points by audionerd 17y ago

pmichaud 17y ago

I thought this was link bait, but he makes a compelling argument.

warfangle 17y ago
He does, but fuchsia background colors on :hover makes it aggravating to read. Thank goodness for being able to disable stylesheets..
- audionerd 17y ago
  or the Readability bookmarklet :) http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
  - warfangle 17y ago
    This is amazing. Thank you!!

9oliYQjP 17y ago

I recently prototyped a site using CSS that only Safari 3+ and FireFox 3+ could understand. I never loaded IE up once while doing it. Boy was it a pleasure being able to have a CSS stylesheet declare rounded borders with one declaration. The problem with supporting IE at all is that so few (almost none) of the CSS functionality that eliminates hacks we've been working with are available. Even IE8 isn't enough. So choosing to support IE at all means intentionally refusing to adopt features supported by Safari and FireFox. That is, unless you want an inconsistent experience for your users. But why do we have to provide a perfectly consistent experience between desktop browsers?I'm starting to think that this is precisely what we should do to force MS to get with the times. Let your site degrade for IE in ways that do not break core functionality or fundamental design requirements. When users start figuring out that they can't see a prettier version of NYTimes because IE doesn't support @font-face, rounded corners, CSS transformations, and other advanced CSS functionality, many will decide to switch. The difference between this approach now and how it was implemented in the 90s during the Netscape/IE wars, is that it's a best practice to degrade gracefully but retain important functionality now. The criticism of this strategy back then is that many sites simply did not work at all in one browser or the other. That would be unacceptable.

Elessar 17y ago
It's generally not possible at a business-level to treat IE users as second-class citizens. So while your idea appeals to anyone who has ever done webapp development, it's not conducive to business interests. After all, there's always another website looking to take the users that you're not willing to fully support.
- 9oliYQjP 17y ago
  But it's not about refusing to support them completely. Also, the difference between trying this strategy today and even 2 years ago is that CSS now has features that would be compelling to end users rather than just developers. Users couldn't care less if developers want to use Safari/FireFox/IE8 because they support display: table. But users are becoming more demanding in terms of user experience and as they realize that the alternative browsers let them have nicer typography and cool desktop-like animations/transitions they will begin to demand this kind of thing. For a while, some die-hards will probably try to use Flash to mimic the experience that HTML5 and these new CSS features offer. But I think the uptake of Flash amongst new developers is less than that of standards-based practices. Simply by virtue of having more developers supporting the standards based approach, I think Flash will eventually be eclipsed until it is relegated to a niche, kind of like how Google Maps is everywhere now and MapQuest is dying. There is this big assumption that users are resistant to change. I'm inclined to believe they're resistant to unnecessary change. We just need to make them feel compelled to change and users will do so. For the first time in a while, Safari and FireFox actually have compelling features to users that IE does not. That changes the landscape quite a bit.
  - thismat 17y ago
    So, when you argue with your client over this specification for hours, and they decide to give the job to someone who will make it consistent, then what? From a business point of view, especially in the marketing world, you'll have a hard time compelling the every day firm to ditch IE support. And as I said in the previous thread about this same exact thing, the elites can do it and still get plenty of business, but is everyone in the position to be able to turn down a job because of this? The answer is probably no. EDIT: I guess the real issue is more along the lines of an education issue, and people who don't grasp it, getting put in charge of whatever new micro-marketing site you're releasing this quarter.

rjurney 17y ago

Anti-trust had no teeth last decade because of the 'privatization is good, private enterprise can do no wrong' economic orgy that just came crashing down, and as a result IE has held the internet back a decade. Just THINK of where we would be if Netscape had won. The political climate has shifted in the wake of the housing crisis, so... could a class action suit have some teeth? Think of all the money lost in fixing IE-specific bugs that only exist because Microsoft used its monopoly to shove an inferior browser onto every desktop, and then refused to put resources into developing it, to ensure they continued to make money on rich client applications and their operating system. Think of the cumulative cost of fixing IE bugs across our entire economy. Microsoft owes the American people billions for IE. I want a class action suit against them. There are IE-specific bug billing records that surely amount to billions of dollars at companies across America. Companies would line up with invoices to web developers to join the suit. Microsoft owes us all money. They must be stopped, and they must pay.

rjurney 17y ago
I'm pretty surprised at the negative karma. How can you all feel anything but outrage about IE? Have you not delt with its bugs for a decade? Do you think this was accidental?
req2 17y ago
"I made the perfect accessory, but it only works with electric cars. GM abused their car monopoly to make gas engines, not electric engines, costing me money. GM owes us all money. GM must be stopped, and GM must pay." (I'll also note that you didn't give Microsoft any money when IE helped you make money, and they're not your insurance policy when you don't make money, either.)
- rjurney 17y ago
  GM doesn't have a car monopoly. The monopoly is why what I said makes sense, and what you said does not.
  - req2 17y ago

youngian 17y ago

How depressing. I think we all knew this deep down, but he puts it very eloquently. IE will always be holding the web back, at least for the entire forseeable future. Even as a lifelong cynic, this still bummed me out.

rbritton 17y ago

Subsequent versions of IE have gotten dramatically better, but the time delta between versions is too long. From its wikipedia page: IE5: September 1997 IE6: August 2001 (+4 years) IE7: October 2006 (+9 years) IE8: March 2009 (+11.5 years) Safari, Firefox, et al do not have a similar lag and have been able to implement newer standards much more quickly. WebKit, for example, is in active development, and the version of the framework in use by Safari is updated fairly regularly.

rimantas 17y ago

It does, albeit too slow. According to our ranking site http://ranking.lt/ http://ranking.lt/ IE share felt below 50% for the first time. One should have in mind, that this is not stats from some geek/webdev site, but collected by online advertising company, so it is even more likely that the stats are skewed in favor of IE.

ZeroGravitas 17y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if IE6 outlasted IE7 as all the people who could upgrade from IE6 (not locked down corporate machines that need to access outdated intranet sites) have no reason to stay on IE7 either. In that respect I think and hope he's wrong. If anyone's writing internal business apps today that will only ever work on one version of one browser then they should be taken out and shot.

TravisLS 17y ago

I don't really agree with this assessment. With the release of IE8, we also saw the browser upgrade coming through automatic windows updates. IE will eventually probably accept this as much as safari and firefox, thereby keeping most users up to speed.

jdavid 17y ago

you should support IE6 as a separate product, and via a separate feature timeline. if you can launch a web app for browsers that are modern and relevant in 4 weeks, and doing it for IE takes an additional 2-4 weeks, why wait to launch those features for a broken browsers, support and reward users with current browsers by giving them 1st access to new features. supporting IE6 on a different roadmap means you can do ROI on each feature, and if IE6 is to expensive to develop a feature for, then...... gasp... you can just skip it.