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IE support

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  • 02-11-2012 2:01pm
    #1
    komodosp
    Registered Users Posts: 1,657 ✭✭✭


    Hi folks

    Just wondering how much everyone does to support Internet Explorer? It seems to me if you develop on Firefox or Chrome or something - everything always looks fine in each major browser until you look at the page in IE. Then you have to go messing about with padding... finding some hack / alternative for some CSS / Javascript statements that it doesn't support, etc, cope with the 30 odd CSS file limit (which can be an issue on some frameworks if you add a bunch of modules) - also the fact that a lot of handy CSS tools (e.g. last-child, etc) are rendered useless by the fact that it just won't work in IE.

    And I can't help but wonder how many hours of productivity are eaten up by staring at the IE developer tools and trying to figure out why this DIV isn't floating properly or why that Javascript tool doesn't work as expected.

    I am beginning to think we should ignore IE (or for those of us lucky enough to get paid, charge extra for IE support) - clients wouldn't be too long in opting just to ignore IE, and people would get sick of websites which don't work properly, IE would decline and we could all get back to proper development work! But we'd all have to do it!

    Just a thought...


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    #2
    Creamy Goodness
    Registered Users Posts: 26,571 ✭✭✭✭Creamy Goodness


    totally depends on your target audience, govt. websites and the likes of daft.ie etc. would have to support the earlier version of IE due to a huge proportion of their traffic coming from companies that rely on IE for some obscure business plug-in or what not. Also teamed with the fact that many big corporations will have sysadmins that will disallow users to install any other browser bar IE for various reasons.

    In my job, we support from IE8 upwards, we're lucky in that the majority of our userbase is chrome/FF and IE 8 and above but i have had to spend many a working hour support IE6 which has made me look about 10 years older than i am currently.


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    #3
    Skrynesaver
    Registered Users Posts: 1,109 ✭✭✭Skrynesaver


    While not as ubiquitous as it once was, In Europe IE is still a quarter of the market. So unfortunately you ave to support it on commercial sites at least


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    #4
    Aswerty
    Registered Users Posts: 586 ✭✭✭Aswerty


    A bit off topic but I came across this article a while back that charges users extra if they're using IE7 and apparently doesn't bother supporting IE6.

    http://www.kogan.com/au/blog/new-internet-explorer-7-tax/


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    #5
    68Murph68
    Registered Users Posts: 583 ✭✭✭68Murph68


    komodosp wrote: »
    I am beginning to think we should ignore IE (or for those of us lucky enough to get paid, charge extra for IE support) - clients wouldn't be too long in opting just to ignore IE, and people would get sick of websites which don't work properly, IE would decline and we could all get back to proper development work! But we'd all have to do it! Just a thought...

    Creamy Goodness wrote: »
    totally depends on your target audience, govt. websites and the likes of daft.ie etc. would have to support the earlier version of IE due to a huge proportion of their traffic coming from companies that rely on IE for some obscure business plug-in or what not. Also teamed with the fact that many big corporations will have sysadmins that will disallow users to install any other browser bar IE for various reasons.

    In my job, we support from IE8 upwards, we're lucky in that the majority of our userbase is chrome/FF and IE 8 and above but i have had to spend many a working hour support IE6 which has made me look about 10 years older than i am currently.

    There's a world of difference between supporting something like IE8 and supporting IE6.

    Given Microsoft themselves have been telling people to get rid of Internet Explorer 6, I think anyone looking for support for it should be told to go jump off a cliff.

    Id imagine that few if any technology companies wouldn't charge extra for anyone looking for support for IE6 or IE7 in this day and age.

    I do know a friend of mine who works in a company and they have a policy of doing absolutely nothing as regards taking into account Microsoft products. If it works fine, if it doesn't no loss.

    I'd say they are a massive exception though.


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    #6
    mathepac
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 4,991 ✭✭✭mathepac


    68Murph68 wrote: »
    ... I'd say they are a massive exception though.
    It's a shwme that Micro$soft ploughed their own furrow for so many years with browser developments, ignoring industry standards and focusing on in-house products.

    There has to be a cut-off where tech companies say "Enough is enough, here's our base-line support spec and anything falling outside that costs (mucho) extra."


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    #7
    68Murph68
    Registered Users Posts: 583 ✭✭✭68Murph68


    mathepac wrote: »
    It's a shwme that Micro$soft ploughed their own furrow for so many years with browser developments, ignoring industry standards and focusing on in-house products.

    There has to be a cut-off where tech companies say "Enough is enough, here's our base-line support spec and anything falling outside that costs (mucho) extra."

    I think long-term they are going to pay for this.

    There's going to be a point where their legacy position on PCs - especially in the lucrative office/business environment - will collapse/run out.


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    #8
    BnB
    Registered Users Posts: 1,081 ✭✭✭BnB


    In an ideal world, it would be great to forget about IE. But unfortunately, while Microsoft's developers might not have been good, their marketing department were brilliant. So now it's out there and we just have to deal with it.

    We have an on-line application that is used mainly by public service users in Ireland. I just checked the Stats there now.

    For all users of the application so far in 2012

    - 81% Have been some version of IE
    - 10% have been IE 6

    We did eventually make the decision this year to stop supporting IE 6 because it was just murdering us on resources. We haven't had any issues with that decision yet because everything we had done up to that point had been tested in IE 6 and we haven't made any significant changes since. But we will have a new release before the end of the year and it will be interesting to see if we have any issues. Whether we have or not, we are putting our foot down, we won't be supporting it. It had just become a joke - Every development meeting we had involved...

    Where is the cool feature you showed us last week on the test system....... We had to scrap it because it wouldn't work on IE6.
    Why has this change taken so long..... Because we had to get it working in IE6
    Did you get to the bottom of that users problem...... Yes, it was an IE6 issue.


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