5 ms·

It's not that people refuse to update. At work, we have not yet upgraded from XP so nothing above IE8 works here - you are not allowed to install any software o

It's not that people refuse to update. At work, we have not yet upgraded from XP so nothing above IE8 works here - you are not allowed to install any software on your own so no Firefox. If news sites, where the primary content should be text and maybe a couple of images, don't work because they require all kinds of fancy "modern web" features - then it is not a problem with users but a problem with the developers of the website.

vonklaus 12y ago
while i respect that you personally are constrained in this respect, support for XP has ended. Chronologically, google inc was founded ~3 years before XP was released and it wasn't mainstream on inception. So the point being when XP was released like 13 years ago, it enjoyed mass audience. Now there have been several iterations of windows and according to mores law 10 years forward see more innovation than the preceding 100. So I would allege, that it is actually absurd that you could be angry that the site you are using is degrading a little less gracefully than you would hope to put pressure on you and your company to use something that was created recently. Conversely, I wouldn't fault the phone company if my Nokia brick phone wasn't fully supported, while I loved playing snake, times change.
- DanBC 12y ago
  I would fault my phone company if I could no longer make and recieve phone calls and send and receive SMS text messages. And it's not just about stuff not working on simple machines - many sites are awful to use on recent smart phones and recent OSs because they have only been tested on local networks on development machines. No one has tested them on normal machines.
  - acdha 12y ago
    > I would fault my phone company if I could no longer make and recieve phone calls and send and receive SMS text messages. We went through this when cell networks decommissioned analog service and again when the early digital stuff was phased out. It turned out not to be such a big deal – once the phone company hit you with a higher bill to support the old equipment, almost everyone quickly decided learning how to use a new phone wasn't so bad. This is similar: companies are hoping that the rest of us will subsidize their IT decisions with increased development and support costs. The difference is that most places lack a mechanism to pass along those costs so they're rarely confronted with a cost comparison.
- klez 12y ago
  About your nokia example, maybe I'm mistaken but wouldn't it be like you couldn't send a proper SMS without upgrading your phone?
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    Yes, you can't send an SMS with an "attached" video with your phone unless you update to a phone with a video camera ... you can still do the SMS but the side-channel and video capabilities are missing.
drivingmenuts 12y ago
No, that's a problem with your IT department being stuck about a decade behind.
- arjie 12y ago
  Some may see your comment as flippant, but it is very accurate. Didn't MS shut off support for that combination of OS and Browser? If so, their IT department is exposing them to security trouble. If so, their competence is in question.
  - staplesowns 12y ago
    Companies can pay extra for XP support even after MSFT's EOL.
    - Isofarro 12y ago
      Or keep using it anyway. Most organisations don't actually receive direct Microsoft support/assistance when they run into problems anyway. So Microsoft ending XP support is practically meaningless. At worst, it allows independent software vendors a small market for regular repeat business. At best, people just keep using XP the same way they've been doing for years.
  - toxican 12y ago
    I've never understood the "well we have to keep IE6 because of this one obscure program" as the excuse to why IT departments force their users to use IE6. Keep IE6 for that one obscure, poorly-made program. Give then a copy of Firefox or Chrome to use for everything else. I realize for a lot of users that's more choice than they can handle, but those that know better must be tortured by that awful lack of choice.
    - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
      I've never used one but I understand there are plugins that load a particular URL in an IEframe. So there's no need for the user to know that they need to use IE for one thing and FF/Chrome for another.
realusername 12y ago
Yeah sure, if IE8 could display CSS properly, that would be the case but unfortunately even basic CSS is quite broken on IE8, it's not just graceful degradation.
- cozuya 12y ago
  Source/examples? The only real hassle that I experience with IE8 is "odd" behavior around positioned elements, everything else works OK. It even supports box-sizing: border-box.
- realusername 12y ago
  I'm not sure why I can't reply to the other comment. I also designed things on IE7 & IE8 and there is definitely some major problems on IE8 which cannot be solved magically by graceful degradation. I think that IE9 is generally fine however, if you design everything with graceful degradation in mind and the website is quite simple it should work (appart for weird borders around images sometimes, but it's fine with a bit of css). I've definitely experienced z-index bugs, floating bugs, padding bugs, display bugs (with inline & blocks) and core JavaScript bugs in IE8 which are making the website unusable. IE8 is definitely not IE9, while it's still better than IE7 and there is generally less issues, there is still IE8 specific work to do to make the website compatible. And depending of your strategy within the company, it might not be worth trying to fix these issues. (this is quite costly).

vonklaus 12y ago

while i respect that you personally are constrained in this respect, support for XP has ended. Chronologically, google inc was founded ~3 years before XP was released and it wasn't mainstream on inception. So the point being when XP was released like 13 years ago, it enjoyed mass audience. Now there have been several iterations of windows and according to mores law 10 years forward see more innovation than the preceding 100. So I would allege, that it is actually absurd that you could be angry that the site you are using is degrading a little less gracefully than you would hope to put pressure on you and your company to use something that was created recently. Conversely, I wouldn't fault the phone company if my Nokia brick phone wasn't fully supported, while I loved playing snake, times change.

DanBC 12y ago
I would fault my phone company if I could no longer make and recieve phone calls and send and receive SMS text messages. And it's not just about stuff not working on simple machines - many sites are awful to use on recent smart phones and recent OSs because they have only been tested on local networks on development machines. No one has tested them on normal machines.
- acdha 12y ago
  > I would fault my phone company if I could no longer make and recieve phone calls and send and receive SMS text messages. We went through this when cell networks decommissioned analog service and again when the early digital stuff was phased out. It turned out not to be such a big deal – once the phone company hit you with a higher bill to support the old equipment, almost everyone quickly decided learning how to use a new phone wasn't so bad. This is similar: companies are hoping that the rest of us will subsidize their IT decisions with increased development and support costs. The difference is that most places lack a mechanism to pass along those costs so they're rarely confronted with a cost comparison.
klez 12y ago
About your nokia example, maybe I'm mistaken but wouldn't it be like you couldn't send a proper SMS without upgrading your phone?
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  Yes, you can't send an SMS with an "attached" video with your phone unless you update to a phone with a video camera ... you can still do the SMS but the side-channel and video capabilities are missing.

drivingmenuts 12y ago

No, that's a problem with your IT department being stuck about a decade behind.

arjie 12y ago
Some may see your comment as flippant, but it is very accurate. Didn't MS shut off support for that combination of OS and Browser? If so, their IT department is exposing them to security trouble. If so, their competence is in question.
- staplesowns 12y ago
  Companies can pay extra for XP support even after MSFT's EOL.
  - Isofarro 12y ago
    Or keep using it anyway. Most organisations don't actually receive direct Microsoft support/assistance when they run into problems anyway. So Microsoft ending XP support is practically meaningless. At worst, it allows independent software vendors a small market for regular repeat business. At best, people just keep using XP the same way they've been doing for years.
- toxican 12y ago
  I've never understood the "well we have to keep IE6 because of this one obscure program" as the excuse to why IT departments force their users to use IE6. Keep IE6 for that one obscure, poorly-made program. Give then a copy of Firefox or Chrome to use for everything else. I realize for a lot of users that's more choice than they can handle, but those that know better must be tortured by that awful lack of choice.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    I've never used one but I understand there are plugins that load a particular URL in an IEframe. So there's no need for the user to know that they need to use IE for one thing and FF/Chrome for another.

realusername 12y ago

Yeah sure, if IE8 could display CSS properly, that would be the case but unfortunately even basic CSS is quite broken on IE8, it's not just graceful degradation.

cozuya 12y ago
Source/examples? The only real hassle that I experience with IE8 is "odd" behavior around positioned elements, everything else works OK. It even supports box-sizing: border-box.
realusername 12y ago
I'm not sure why I can't reply to the other comment. I also designed things on IE7 & IE8 and there is definitely some major problems on IE8 which cannot be solved magically by graceful degradation. I think that IE9 is generally fine however, if you design everything with graceful degradation in mind and the website is quite simple it should work (appart for weird borders around images sometimes, but it's fine with a bit of css). I've definitely experienced z-index bugs, floating bugs, padding bugs, display bugs (with inline & blocks) and core JavaScript bugs in IE8 which are making the website unusable. IE8 is definitely not IE9, while it's still better than IE7 and there is generally less issues, there is still IE8 specific work to do to make the website compatible. And depending of your strategy within the company, it might not be worth trying to fix these issues. (this is quite costly).