Why proboards... Why...?

[RedBassett]

Jan 17, 2013 15:14:42 GMT -8 Ryan Roos said:

Jan 17, 2013 14:41:26 GMT -8 RedBassett said:

While I agree with Ryan regarding not understanding loyalty to IE, that isn't an IE only issue.  The forum appears wrong for me, using Canary on a Mac.  The issue can be fixed by more customized coding, which can be provided by members in the Plugins & Codes board, under the template modification section.

We don't claim to support Canary. And what's more...

From the homepage of Canary, in the same sized font as their explanation of the browser itself.

Be forewarned: it's designed for developers and early adopters, and can sometimes break down completely.

www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/canary.html

I'm stating that the issue isn't IE only.  I run tests in stable versions of Chrome, Safari, and Firefox before reporting something as not working myself.

[Ryan Roos]

Jan 17, 2013 19:02:47 GMT -8 RedBassett said:

Jan 17, 2013 15:14:42 GMT -8 Ryan Roos said:

We don't claim to support Canary. And what's more...

From the homepage of Canary, in the same sized font as their explanation of the browser itself.

Be forewarned: it's designed for developers and early adopters, and can sometimes break down completely.

www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/canary.html

I'm stating that the issue isn't IE only.  I run tests in stable versions of Chrome, Safari, and Firefox before reporting something as not working myself.

But on that logic there are hundreds of micro-browsers that render things incorrectly because that is their nature. I'll define a micro-browser as anything that has less than 0.01% market share. We support the browsers that make up 99% of the population. If people choose to use a browser no one has heard of or one that is experimental (regardless of if it's Google experimenting) we can't realistically support them.

There are set in stone web standards. We support the browsers that follow those standards. Then beyond that we went and supported Internet Explorer 7 8 and 9 too. Because it ships with windows there is a certain amount of the population get stuck using it without knowing better.

The entire browser scenario is shocking to me. It's the equivalent of me telling you that Toyota's have been found to have faulty brakes, and engine that occasionally explodes, and seat belts that can cut you in half during an accident. I say, "Please drive any other car. I recommend a Nissan or a Honda" and people tell me they'll just keep the Toyota because they like some random feature about it, like the windows manually roll down. This isn't my opinion, it's a fact. Internet Explorer is a car brand that releases model after model of car with broken faulty parts. At the same time there are other cars out there that are safe and work properly. What's more is IE users are still dealing with stuff like updating (buying a new car, every time a new model comes out). Chrome and Firefox have gone beyond that, they just upgrade your car to the next model every time there's a new one to ensure that you stay ahead of the curve in all aspects. So now consider people are telling me they want to continue driving faulty Toyotas from the late nineties while I'm telling them there are brand new Mazdas being shipped everyday for free. It crazy to me. I get that as a non-internet person you don't get this, but the car analogy should literally show you were we're at. If you using Internet Explorer you are continuing to use outdated, broken technology because you are comfortable with it. I personally can't even fathom what the differences between IE and Firefox are to someone who isn't internet savvy. All the behind the scenes stuff is behind the scenes. So it's a window you view the internet in either way to a non computer person. And if you don't like one, try the other.

/end rant

Thank you for reading.

(Btw, I drive a Toyota and love that car brand. I only used it as an example. I highly recommend Toyotas when it comes to cars)

Edit: The 'you' isn't RedBassett in my rant. It's just to whoever is reading (that might be using IE). Thank you.

[Camille]

As someone who is reading your post that uses IE8, let me say that I truly appreciate the time you have taken to explain about browsers.  And your point about it ships with windows was not lost on me.  Neither was this If you using Internet Explorer you are continuing to use outdated, broken technology because you are comfortable with it.  Well, I've had to take a good look at why I'm so fond of IE8, and I realize it is because I'm comfortable with it!

Thank you so much for taking the time to delve further into the subject of browsers.  You've made me see that I need to change from what is comfortable to something that is more practical. 

[Martyn Dale]

Unfortunately the blame isnt really on users and their comfort level, but instead on Microsofts way of doing things. As you have said, you would be more than willing to use IE9 if you were able, they just do not let you and as such you have to take a bigger step outside of your comfort zone. Given every other modern browser will work all the way back to XP (including the IE plugin i mentioned previously) it demonstrates that that technology does work on older platforms Microsoft is just unwilling. If I recall correctly the only real reason IE9 wouldn't work on XP is the hardware acceleration stuff. There is no rational reason not to just have that stripped out in a version.

The other big issue is unlike the other browsers which have very frequent updates, a new IE is mainly only released with each new windows version. By the time its shipped, its already outdated and behind the times.

[Ryan Roos]

Jan 18, 2013 8:53:02 GMT -8 Camille said:

As someone who is reading your post that uses IE8, let me say that I truly appreciate the time you have taken to explain about browsers.  And your point about it ships with windows was not lost on me.  Neither was this If you using Internet Explorer you are continuing to use outdated, broken technology because you are comfortable with it.  Well, I've had to take a good look at why I'm so fond of IE8, and I realize it is because I'm comfortable with it!

Thank you so much for taking the time to delve further into the subject of browsers.  You've made me see that I need to change from what is comfortable to something that is more practical. 

Please take no offense from my post. Just understand why it can be frustrating for software developers to have to continue to code crutches for IE users. Occasionally users themselves experience this with things like your sidebar plugin. The industry spends billions of dollars a year on nothing but compatibility for older browsers. Lots of companies have recently decided to not even support IE (or certain versions of it, like 7 and 8). Lots of time goes into making things just work how they are supposed to by default.

Thank you.

[Martyn Dale]

Further to Ryans message about the industry spending money on it, the following is an article about a company who decided to start charging IE users more to offset the additional cost of trying to support it.

readwrite.com/2012/06/18/retailers-tax-on-ie-7-users-opens-new-front-in-browser-wars

A quote from that article relating to Ryans point is as follows:

“Within a week it was painfully obvious that for every great idea we
came up with we had to create equally terrible hacks to support IE7 or
even IE8. Supporting variants of IE can easily increase design work by
30% to 100%, but complex features can easily double (or even triple)
development time. It doesn’t take many developer salaries before this
‘IE tax’ can cost you well over $100,000,” Rooney wrote this spring.

[JJ]

I have Chrome, FF and IE on my computer, I keep trying Chrome and FF, but just like IE better. Is IE9 acceptable for most websites?

[Willing Sniper]

My members were having issues with IE7 and IE9. A week ago in V4. The page header was in the middle of their page

[Martyn Dale]

Yeah, IE (even the newer versions) are not very good with compatibility. 7 and 8 though a

The following link shows comparison of newer functionality between the newest Chrome, the last version of FF, and the new IE10
html5test.com/compare/browser/chrome23/ff17/ie10.html

Even though IE 10 is fresh out, even the previous version of FF destroys it (FF is on 18 now, that link compares 17) and in both cases Chrome is even further ahead.

The next one is scary, compare the scores of IE 10, 9 and 8:
html5test.com/compare/browser/ie10/ie09/ie08.html

If 10 is current but still behind, seeing the scores for 9 and 8 should be terrifying. 7 scored a 27

[Camille]

Jan 18, 2013 9:38:39 GMT -8 Ryan Roos said:

Jan 18, 2013 8:53:02 GMT -8 Camille said:

As someone who is reading your post that uses IE8, let me say that I truly appreciate the time you have taken to explain about browsers.  And your point about it ships with windows was not lost on me.  Neither was this If you using Internet Explorer you are continuing to use outdated, broken technology because you are comfortable with it.  Well, I've had to take a good look at why I'm so fond of IE8, and I realize it is because I'm comfortable with it!

Thank you so much for taking the time to delve further into the subject of browsers.  You've made me see that I need to change from what is comfortable to something that is more practical. 

Please take no offense from my post. Just understand why it can be frustrating for software developers to have to continue to code crutches for IE users. Occasionally users themselves experience this with things like your sidebar plugin. The industry spends billions of dollars a year on nothing but compatibility for older browsers. Lots of companies have recently decided to not even support IE (or certain versions of it, like 7 and 8). Lots of time goes into making things just work how they are supposed to by default.

Thank you.

None taken, Ryan Roos.  Actually, it is great that this information about browsers has been posted.  I had no idea about the issues that developers have in doing the extra work for the IE browser users.  It makes me realize how really great ProBoards is to continue to support IE.

Thank you so much for the information.


ladyauburn33

[Camille]

Jan 18, 2013 9:52:34 GMT -8 Martyn Dale said:

Further to Ryans message about the industry spending money on it, the following is an article about a company who decided to start charging IE users more to offset the additional cost of trying to support it.

readwrite.com/2012/06/18/retailers-tax-on-ie-7-users-opens-new-front-in-browser-wars

A quote from that article relating to Ryans point is as follows:

“Within a week it was painfully obvious that for every great idea we
came up with we had to create equally terrible hacks to support IE7 or
even IE8. Supporting variants of IE can easily increase design work by
30% to 100%, but complex features can easily double (or even triple)
development time. It doesn’t take many developer salaries before this
‘IE tax’ can cost you well over $100,000,” Rooney wrote this spring.

My thanks to you as well, Martyn Dale, for the link, and further explanation about browsers.  This is information we all needed to hear.

Also, this information from an earlier post, was very important for me to consider: 

As a side note from the discussions of what browser you use, please also factor in other visitors to your forum.

If you use the forum just for yourself, as personal storage space then of course this will not be an issue. The issue is, is that if you have any other users on your site, using things that are IE8 only will cause significant problems for them. As of December, only 6.8 % of internet users are still on IE8, others either use something newer, or an alternate newer browser.

 

[JJ]

Perhaps when they get the bugs out, IE10 will be a worthy performer. A whole lot of people still use IE according to the following article.

thenextweb.com/apps/2012/12/01/ie10-grabs-0-51-market-share-firefox-passes-20-again-chrome-loses-users-third-month-in-a-row/

[Ryan Roos]

Jan 18, 2013 11:26:18 GMT -8 Martyn Dale said:

Yeah, IE (even the newer versions) are not very good with compatibility. 7 and 8 though a

The following link shows comparison of newer functionality between the newest Chrome, the last version of FF, and the new IE10
html5test.com/compare/browser/chrome23/ff17/ie10.html

Even though IE 10 is fresh out, even the previous version of FF destroys it (FF is on 18 now, that link compares 17) and in both cases Chrome is even further ahead.

The next one is scary, compare the scores of IE 10, 9 and 8:
html5test.com/compare/browser/ie10/ie09/ie08.html

If 10 is current but still behind, seeing the scores for 9 and 8 should be terrifying. 7 scored a 27

I find those links disturbing even though I already know the information they contain.

Again it's literally astounding to me that people are even able to use IE. The link JJ posted is frightening too. It really shows the monopoly Microsoft has when it comes to shipping their browser with their software and not giving people a choice. I love that in Europe, at least, they were forced into doing so.

And the worst part is people just don't know. They have no idea what's going on at all. And as a result we waste billions of dollars and the entire internet suffers because so many things are held back just to accommodate these broken grandfathered browsers.

Just for a measure that hits closer to home. I estimate that if we didn't support IE here at ProBoards that we could have launched v5 early last year. I don't doubt based on the code we've hacked and the time we've wasted with bugs that we could have shaved nearly a year off of release if we didn't code for IE 7 8 and 9. To build on that further there would be less bugs for the other browsers as well. We spend so much time fixing IE bugs and hacking things to work for IE that we cause problems in the browsers that are doing it right. Don't forget load times as well. You aren't just loading the code for your browser, you're loading all the extra code it take to make IE work properly. Features are effected to, the theme manager is a very very complex system that doesn't always work like it should. The number one reason is compatibility issues. We've even had to scrap ideas for v5 because they simply wouldn't be doable for the IE users. So no one got them. Lots of features that get rejected that are asked for come down to that same reason, even if we don't always say so.

[DeltaDart]

Not that it's really relevant to Proboard Forums or its Users in how we use this/our Proboard sites, but since we are kind of damning IE, its old technology and advocating people move away from it, I think it's worth mentioning there are still many sites written specifically for IE.

Case in point, US Government sites (DOD especially).  Many DOD sites are written specifically for IE due to smart-card requirements and as such many people have no choice but to use it.  Can they use both IE and FF... of course, which is why all my computers have both (multiple) browsers, because I am NOT a fan of IE, but love FF.

Again, not really relevant here, but a piece of info that should show regardless of how we feel about IE, it's not going away and in fact is still embraced by some big groups.  So know your needs and plan accordingly when selecting your default browser... or writing code for any software application.

[JJ]

You brought out a good point, Delta Dart. My husband worked for a large international applicance manufacturer and they used IE. When he got an opportunity to work from home and log in, he had to use IE. This is true world wide. Bashing IE isn't going to make it going away.