Opinion ColumnIt’s Time To Stop Blaming Internet Explorer
Earlier this week we published two articles by Louis Lazaris: one on why old browsers are holding back the Web and another encouraging Web users to upgrade their browsers and use modern browsers other than IE. This article presents another perspective on this issue. Nicholas C. Zakas, a well-respected member of the developer community, goes into specifics of why we should focus on the good parts of our job so we can tolerate the bad ones and why fixating on circumstances that you can’t change isn’t a recipe for success. Do you share Louis’ or Nicholas’ view? Leave a comment.—Ed.
A couple of days ago, Smashing Magazine published an article entitled, Old Browsers Are Holding Back The Web. The author of this article, Louis Lazaris, suggests that “old browsers” are holding Web developers back from creating beautiful experiences. Old browsers, in this case, apparently referred to Internet Explorer version 6-9. That’s right, the author groups Internet Explorer 9 into the same group as Internet Explorer 6. He goes on to list some of the things that you can’t use in Internet Explorer 8 and 9.
(Note: Louis Lazaris makes a statement that even although IE9 is a huge step forward from previous versions of Internet Explorer, it’s already missing some of the important features that other modern browsers have and does not have auto-update like other popular browsers do, so it will become outdated relatively soon. According to Microsoft auto-update policy, only those users will be upgraded to a newer version of Internet Explorer that have on automatic updating via Windows Update turned on.—Ed.)
Articles like this frustrate me a lot. For most of my career, I’ve fought hard against the “woe is me” attitude embraced by so many in Web development and articulated in the article. This attitude is completely counterproductive and frequently inaccurately described. Everyone was complaining when Internet Explorer 6 had a 90%+ marketshare. That share has shrunk to 6.3% today globally (though Louis cites 0.66%, which is true in the United States). Microsoft even kicked off a campaign to encourage people to upgrade.
I can understand complaining about Internet Explorer 6 and even 7. We had them for a long time, they were a source of frustration, and I get that. I would still never let anyone that I worked with get too buried in complaining about them. If it’s our job to support those browsers then that’s just part of our job. The truth is that every job has some part of it that sucks. Even at my favorite job, as front end lead on the Yahoo homepage, there were still parts of my job that sucked. You just need to focus on the good parts so you can tolerate the bad ones. Welcome to life.
But then the article goes on to bemoan the fact that so many people use Internet Explorer 8 and that Internet Explorer 9 is gaining market share. First and foremost, I would much rather support Internet Explorer 8 then I would 6 and 7. Microsoft forcing most people to upgrade from 6 and 7 to 8 is an incredible move and undoubtedly a blessing.
Internet Explorer 9
Internet Explorer 9, on the other hand, is a damn good browser. The only reason it doesn’t have all of the features as Chrome and Firefox is because they rebuilt the thing from scratch so that adding more features in the future would be easier. Let me say that again: they rebuilt the browser from scratch. They necessarily had to decide what were the most important features to get in so that they could release something and start getting people to upgrade from version 8. If they had waited for feature parity with Chrome or Firefox, we probably still wouldn’t have Internet Explorer 9.
The constant drumming of “Internet Explorer X is the new Internet Explorer 6″ is getting very old. Microsoft has done a lot to try to correct their past transgressions, and it seems like there are still too many people who aren’t willing to let go of old grudges. There will always be a browser that lags behind others. First it was Mosaic that was lagging behind Netscape. Then it was Netscape lagging behind Internet Explorer. Then it was Internet Explorer lagging behind Firefox. People are already starting to complain about Android 2.x browsers.
What makes the Web beautiful is precisely that there are multiple browsers and, if you build things correctly, your sites and applications work in them all. They might not necessarily work exactly the same in them all, but they should still be able to work. There is absolutely nothing preventing you from using new features in your Web applications, that’s what progressive enhancement is all about. No one is saying you can’t use RGBA. No one is holding a gun to your head and saying don’t use CSS animations. As an engineer on the Web application you get to make decisions every single day.
Progressive Enhancement
Louis briefly mentions progressive enhancement as a concept that doesn’t even enter into the equation. Once again, this is indicative of an old attitude of Web development that is counterproductive and ultimately lacking in creativity. The reason that I still give talks about progressive enhancement is because it allows you to give the best experience possible to users based on the browser’s capabilities. That’s the way the Web was meant to work. I’ve included a video of that talk below in case you haven’t seen it.
It’s not actually old browsers that are holding back the web, it’s old ways of thinking about the Web that are holding back the Web. Fixating on circumstances that you can’t change isn’t a recipe for success. The number of browsers we have to support, even “old browsers”, just represent constraints to the problems that we have to solve. It is from within constraints that creativity is born. The Web development community has evolved enough that we should stop pointing fingers at Internet Explorer and start taking responsibility for how we do our jobs. Let’s create solutions rather than continually pointing fingers. We are better than that.
Yes, complaining is useful to get people to listen. Microsoft is listening, so continuing to complain doesn’t do anything except perpetuate an attitude that I would rather not have in Web development. Let’s give them a chance to right the ship without retrying them for past transgressions perpetually.
Hannes Calitz
July 12th, 2012 8:20 amI must admit, I have caught myself constantly complaining about IE in the past, but you sir, have given me new perspective. Thank you for this eye opening article.
Andreas Møller
July 12th, 2012 3:22 pmIn that entire post, the only thing i can support is that ie9 actually is a fine browser… i will probably never recommend it, but i have no issues with supporting it.
On the other hand, the statement that the multitude of browsers is what makes the web beautiful is to me outright stupid. No its not, as a developer you want control over your site, and the difference in browsers are getting in the way of this goal. I dont blame ie 6, or 7, or 8, The problem is not that they exist, its that people still use them.
I believe that the problem is mainly that we as developers keep supporting them. The average user doesn’t know any thing about browsers, and will not upgrade his browser if things are working just fine. Its on us to tell him that the web has gone under some major maintenance, and he needs a new browser to keep using it.Its an evil circle: We support older browsers because they still have a market share, and they maintain a market share because we keep supporting them.
When it comes to html5 and css3, I think WWWC has a tendency to overstuff their standards a bit, maybe if half of the html5 features was moved to html6, we would have market wide support by now. We cant really blame the browsers that they are not supporting something that isn’t really a standard yet.
Karim
July 12th, 2012 3:34 pmThere’s actually one thing, one decision, that Microsoft should have made, and it didn’t: AUTO-UPGRADE the browser.
Actually that’s the main issue developers have with MS. The fact that IE9, and after being rebuilt from scratch, still does not auto-upgrade, makes it the next IE6. Imagine 5 years from now, where would Chrome and Firefox be? and how many developers would be complaining about people who still use windows 7 and can’t upgrade to IE10 (or just don’t bother upgrading), and how many additional working hours it would mean to make your app IE9 friendly. Microsoft will continue to hold back the web for years to come.
One decision Microsoft, that would have made all the difference.
Jason Farrell
July 12th, 2012 6:08 pmAs to the Auto-Update thing. People seems to forget that IE is run heavily in the enterprise where the same IT managers want control over what people are running. Auto Update would be a horrible idea in this case. REMEMBER, Microsoft’s main customer base, you know the people who use IE for more than just Facebook and Twitter, are businesses, and they DO NOT upgrade overnight and most certainly do not want their end users automatically updating
David Prince
July 12th, 2012 6:18 pmThere are many reasons why users don’t upgrade; inertia is certainly one which can be tackled through education, but there are others, too.
The richness brought by different browsers, as alluded to by Zakas, is very real. That IE can be so easily embedded in applications – way before Webkit came on the scene – is one reason why the Web has exploded to what it is now. For business to truly embrace the Web, they need the stability that Microsoft offers with IE; rolling out an update, no matter how small, is a major, costly task for an IT team at a corporate. IE, as a Microsoft product, brings confidence with it for corporations.
And let’s face it – IE9 is a damn fine browser. And you know what? So was IE6 when it launched – it was light years ahead of Netscape Navigator, had almost universal market share and made developer’s lives much easier for a while. It pushed the Web into the mainstream.
Another ironic thing is that many IE bashers bemoan its proprietary nature. Its market share in the past has made IE a standard in itself, albeit a de facto standard. Let’s not forget that IE’s filters are fore-runners to many CSS3 features. Now that the IE team has embraced W3C standards, there’s a complaint that it isn’t keeping up with proprietary technology!
IE today brings stability to the market, and forces to truly consider whether the latest whizz-bang feature is truly necessary. If it doesn’t work in IE, or needs a workaround, we have to justify it to ourselves or our clients – which we should surely be able to do with every design decision.
There is a very dangerous rhetoric being spouted by Lazaris and others. Ironically, the anti-IE voices are threatening innovation and openness – the very things they purport to rally against. IE has brought many great innovations, and MS has wrapped them in a very usable UI – compare with Netscape Navigator before it or even Firefox today; IE can be easily picked up and used by anyone, whereas Firefox still has an element of ‘geek chic’ about it.
To support IE is to embrace progressive enhancement. Want those curvy corners and multiple backgrounds and geolocation? Go ahead, add them for Webkit-based browsers – but don’t make your entire design dependent upon them. To do that not only excludes IE users, but those of browsers with assistive technology, users of devices with embedded browsers and users who decide to turn some features off (e.g. offline storage, javascript, custom stylesheets and so on). To exclude IE is to enter into a design methodology which will exclude others and do your visitors, customers and yourself a disservice.
Simon Buerger
July 12th, 2012 6:28 pmThis is the core problem. Quick release cycles and browser auto-upgrading (and not through Windows Update either) are absolutely essential for the future sanity of all web developers.
Entegy
July 12th, 2012 6:34 pmThe problem with that is Microsoft has a special responsibility compared to the other vendors: The enterprise. Microsoft gives them a stable set of features. Enterprise wants a stable platform, so Microsoft cannot force a browser to upgrade (although home computers with Windows Updates on, which it is by default, do) for everyone.
Richard West
July 12th, 2012 8:24 pmObviously your a web dev, and not an IT administrator at a large company. IT Admins must be in control on the upgrade process in order to ensure that the systems are in a known, working state.
While I can see the benefit of auto updating software, you must recognize that there are problems that can be introduced, and therefore IT admins must excercise control updates.
Simon Buerger
July 13th, 2012 1:08 amThe thing is at some point web developers are going to have to abandon checking that their site works in all the old versions of IE. If things continue the way they are we will potentially be supporting 10 versions of IE in 7 years time. But only the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera.
(Best explained by Paul Irish – http://paulirish.com/2011/browser-market-pollution-iex-is-the-new-ie6/)
Michael
July 12th, 2012 10:02 pmI agree that everyone should stop complaining unless they are complaining in the form of a letter of constructive criticism directly to Microsoft. I still do not like IE. It sucks, but I am not worried about it.
JoeMoe
July 23rd, 2012 10:16 pmSending letters to Microsoft will not do anything. They have been aware of their terrible browser for years now. Its the fact that they lost market share that they started to take it seriously. One of the reasons they lost market share is because we have either complained about it online or educated people around us about how terrible the browser is and that there are clearly much better options. So they make the switch to another browser AFTER hearing about it.
Mattia Forza
July 12th, 2012 8:23 amI completely and absolutely agree with you Nicholas!
What’s wrong with old browsers it’s not that they’re out-of-date but how we use them. Sure we had a lot of troubles with IE6 and 7 that lead many of us near suicide but hey, neither the first versions of Firefox were so good as now it is.
Internet is evolving and we must evolve with it. Progressive enhancement it’s just the first and best thing that we, as web professionals, have to apply to our next project.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I firmly believe that you’re spot on. A death campain against Internet Explorer 6, 7 and perhaps even 8 shouldn’t give us any blame but I must admit that IE9 it’s many step further and so much close to the commonly called “modern browsers”.
Thanks again. Respect.
alex
July 12th, 2012 8:28 amNo use crying over spilled milk. But that doesn’t mean that Microsoft doesn’t make poor decisions at every turn.
I would relate it to StarWars and how it was an important part of my childhood imagination. But now SW was ruined by jarjarbinks and GL’s poor idea of what kids like today. Not to mention the apparent necessity to market said movies to kids. As if their parents had never heard of SW and didn’t know it was awesome. But I have digressed from the start, Microsoft/MS have also been an important part of my upbringing but their software is simply crap and always has been, ever since we had other options. They have good ideas but their implementation of said ideas is always shortsighted and plain lacking.
That said, I feel like it’s important to have these big companies who make big mistakes so the smaller (or other) companies have something to gauge themselves on. We need a stupid person to make us feel smart.
Will
July 12th, 2012 9:49 amCan you explain: “But that doesn’t mean that Microsoft doesn’t make poor decisions at every turn” and “their software is simply crap and always has been”. I find that hard to believe, you must be misinformed. This post is not even about companies! Your comment is just wrong.
alex
July 12th, 2012 10:23 amWill,
Are you saying you like IE? Microsoft made it and its simply crap, the same with Word, or WIndows, Outlook, or ANYTHING else they make, while it is sometimes a great idea, it’s usually created with very poor standards. So MS has created a lot of software that was great in theory and first on the market. If you compare any of their products to their competitors, you will see that the ONLY reason MS is more successful is because they had the idea first and not because their product is better. MS Office vs Google Documents, Outlook vs Gmail, IE vs Chrome, etc., etc., etc.
Will
July 12th, 2012 10:34 amFor one thing: I don’t use IE, I’m a Chrome fan. I use IE for dev purposes.
Second: You’re argument of “Microsoft makes bad products therefore IE is bad” is just wrong. MS does some pretty good things too (SQL Server is damn good, Win 7 is the fastest selling OS ever, the Xbox is a raging success) but my point is all of that does not matter here! Have you even used IE9? Have you seen the demos from http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/Experience ? Everything there is comparable to most webkit demos.
PS: Just because you don’t like MS products doesn’t mean they are badly made. Outlook for instance is way better than anything out there as email management, RSS reader, automatic journal entry, calendar, tasks, reminders etc. all in one.
spersico
July 12th, 2012 11:08 amso? don’t you think that creating the great ideas first, even when the first tries are crap, is not valuable???… you can’t compare MS Office ’cause MSO was born 15 years ago (or more) and GDocs has… how much? 3? 4? Dunno.. And MS right now is pretty damm good, dont you think, its quite easy, and powerful!
I know that MS has been wrong for several years, the whole period between (but not including) XP and Seven, was a black hole in Microsoft, but now we have IE9, we have W7, we have Office (again, the last ones were pretty good..). And even when MS is throwing W8 to the garbage, it’s having a change of mind, in how it deals with us, the users, and with us, the developers.
So, if you stop hating, and if you are capable of being objective.. you ‘ll see that not everything is black in MS..
And, NO, what we are talking about is about how we cry and blame our surroundings, for things WE KNOW we have to do.. Thats all! I, personally, think that this is right… until IE6.. GOD i hate it so much!!!! (and IE7 is not far away, either..)
Dominik Marczuk
July 12th, 2012 11:48 amalex,
I wouldn’t go that far into criticism against Microsoft. Windows 7 is a really good OS, no matter what Tim Cook and Linus Torvalds would want you to think. It’s stable, it’s easy to use, it’s relatively fast, although resource-hungry. Outlook can’t really be compared to webmail clients. I would rather you invoked Thunderbird (which I do consider to be better, by the way). MS Office vs. Google Docs comparison shares the same defect. But even if you want to compare these two, you really do have to realise that the feature set of Google Docs is just plain LIMITED in comparison to any desktop solution, not necessarily MS Office. And that’s not because it sucks as a piece of software, but rather due to the technologies used to develop it. A web app will never be comparable to a desktop app, period. Plus, have you seen the “Googlighting” video made by MS? It’s mostly a joke, but it presents a really valid point: Google Docs’ feature set can change at any moment and the licence is a laugh. Do you know Google owns your docs? How about the Docs to Drive upgrade that’s soon going to happen? Oh, I don’s suppose you’ve tried using Google Docs with your router down, have you?
That being said, I do agree IE browsers are deficient and SHOULD be complained about. They’re not standards-compliant, buggy, they require additional work that would otherwise let us developers have more spare time (for the same money!), they can’t be installed under Linux or OSX.
IMO, one of the things that impedes “normal” development of IE is Microsoft’s zero bugs policy. A new piece of software is released when all bug reports have been dealt with. That means prolonged periods between new releases. That in turn means incorporating new features is slow and by the time they make it to the new product, they’re commonplace among the competition. Tough luck for us.
My recipe for success: support IE8, add a nice black “IE7 and earlier are not supported” screen for the older versions. Example: http://umbraprojekt.pl/pl/ie7. That keeps *MY* clients happy and I don’t work extra hours ;).
Kedar
July 12th, 2012 11:58 amHey Alex,
If you hate Microsoft, say like it is. Don’t throw garbage.
– @ “MS Office vs Google Documents, Outlook vs Gmail, IE vs Chrome, etc., etc., etc.”
So you are actually comparing Desktop Products with Web Based Products? Isn’t this what people call “Comparing Apples with Oranges”.
– @ the same with Word, or WIndows, Outlook, or ANYTHING else they make
So you are saying that “Word and Outlook”, two of the most widely used applications are crap. Try re-evaluating your definition of “Crap”.
Row
July 12th, 2012 2:44 pmHey together!
Well i think what alex is trying to tell is (its at least how i think about this IE-story):
Microsoft had a lot of good ideas at first. Its just a fact. As some people already said, they never reached a nice and perfect implementation when they throw their software etc. on market. The Software is okay but was always complicated to handle.
I think i know what im talking about cause i used/use several OS like Windows7, Linux/Ubuntu and iOS. When I was young i started at first with windows in the mid 90s. As long as you dont know anything else you wont miss anything of course.
The first time i was using Ubuntu and iOS i was trying to do things in the way i know from windows (i.e. installing software, handle the OS etc etc etc…) i really was wondering as i saw how much easier it is and how smoothly everything works.
As i began to do some webdevelopment i got “behind the scenes” of the most used browsers which was the point i was starting to have one question all along: “why is microsoft/IE not fu***** able to develope a browser which doesnt need some special fixes all the time.”
I mean they obviously wanted to be something special (as almost every brand). But the way they do it is just a “negative speciality”. I never heard someone talking about IE like “wow, this is really cool, did you see the new feature………….”
IE is just not up-to-date. I dont know much about the IE10. But in the past everytime there was a release of IE, all other browsers were much closer to the future because they think ahead. But IE was just adepted to present standarts. This is why i also think IE is holding back the web. It was one of the first and one of the best browsers as we all know but sometimes it looks like they use this as main argument for their work.
Nevertheless i hope and wish that IE will become a strong and powerfull browser again :)
I hope you wont be angry about my little superficial knowledge. What i wrote is just my personal impression and view of the things. So i also apologize about some mistakes in my grammar and words.
conclusion: no one’s perfect ^^
Nerraga
July 12th, 2012 4:52 pmJust because something is ubiquitous doesn’t mean it’s particularly good. Windows is a vehicle for Office. Windows is dominates both enterprise and consumer spaces primarily because there hasn’t ever really been a strong competitor (still isn’t). It follows that whatever Microsoft puts in front of their users is going to greatly benefit from their market dominance. These products don’t have to innovate or compete on merit, they win simple by virtue of being Microsoft products on the already dominant Microsoft platform. Until very recently this was the case with ie too.
Office is a shiny, complex piece of crap. Outlook too.
alex
July 12th, 2012 10:11 amWhat we are really talking about here is Microsofts’ poor planning. All of their products have a competitor that makes a better product. The only reason MS is successful is because they made moves first.
Will
July 12th, 2012 10:37 amThat’s not true. Office and Win7 are great software products. Fair enough if you don’t like it but that is far from they are badly made. And no offence, but I find Google docs pretty limited in comparison. “Oh, I want to work on my 20k word dissertation in a coffee shop with no wifi… wait, I can’t”
johannes
July 12th, 2012 11:20 amyes, in fact you can. try it!
Will
July 12th, 2012 3:42 pmIt’s in beta… and in a browser…
Mike
July 12th, 2012 3:26 pm@alex, it is easy to fling mud at other peoples work and call it poorly designed and crap. Do I love IE and sing it’s praises from the roof top, not at all, I recommend chrome, but with the release of IE9 I am reevaluating that.
Microsoft is faced with a unique challenge their core mission was originally to deliver the personal PC to every person in the world, and I believe that they have done a great job at this. This also means that their software must meet the needs of every person in the world. Excel revolutionized the way business was done and it is still the defacto standard for business. As of the latest version, things that should be easy, are generally easy. More advanced tasks, take a little learning to do, heaven forbid that an application requires you to understand it.
Nut I digress the original point of this article is people should stop complaining about things and find solution. A sentiment I agree with completely. I am not a fan of Apple, as at my core I am software developer. This does not mean that I ignore them, I find ways around the issue that work for me and my users, I really like XenApp server as it is really good for this. I work in the world of enterprise software and could easily dictate that everyone use windows, but that is not professional. I find this even more true on the web, were as a professional it is our job to support our users and the technology they embrace. We can make suggestions, recommendation or pleas at times, but ultimately, if we want their usage and/or business we must meet them were they decide to meet us, sometimes that is IE6, but i still cherish the opportunity to server their needs.
Jens
July 12th, 2012 6:57 pmWhy do you down vote this post? – It’s simply true.
Teylor Feliz
July 12th, 2012 8:29 amHi Nicholas,
Completely agree with you. People just look for an excuse to complaint. I remember the same thing about IE > 9. Every year we hear the same over and over. Flash is another example of people repeating what they hear. Also, there are people that go even further complaining about Firefox for example, because the browser is not supporting a CSS3 feature that Chrome already has. This is just ridiculous!
Ilhan Negis
July 12th, 2012 8:29 amNice reading, but doesn’t change the fact that Microsoft doesn’t have motivation (money!) for creating better browsers, and ie9 is shit. “they rebuilt the browser from scratch” you said in bold, and yet they are doing exactly the same mistakes all over again, there’s nothing on this world can justify that. writing an article for sake of saying something different than others doesn’t change that fact, does it?
Will
July 12th, 2012 9:52 amHow do you know this? “Microsoft doesn’t have motivation (money!) for creating better browsers, and IE9 is shit”.
Microsoft have been developing IE at a loss but still make big improvements. You should know if you actually used IE9 instead of following the masses. IE9 is quite good and in some regards better than other browsers.
PS: Google is making Chrome out of motivation (or as you say it: money) to gain more users (i.e. more ads i.e. more money).
Ilhan Negis
July 12th, 2012 11:42 amMicrosoft’s demotivation from doing “right” browser is coming from mindset of the company,
It’s not “seen” as a direct source of revenue, therefore they do not waste time on it, one step further, they actually thought that, if they update incrementally and fix bugs on existing browsers, it will hurt them, therefore they JUST released major versions over 6.
And, please, before asking “how do I know”, think yourself, justify why do you need to upgrade whole operating system to get ie9.
Will
July 12th, 2012 3:40 pmAnd how is Google Chrome a “direct source of revenue”? They just care more about us, sure… it’s not about the money, like in any company.
I don’t think IE6 doesn’t have automatic updating because MS don’t want us to have it, that’s silly. They don’t have it cause it was 2001 when it was released and nobody though of it. Google learned from them what a pain it is to upgrade and offered a browser with automatic updates. You know… much later, after we learned about it. Great move I might say and easier to do than change existing software.
With your logic might as well blame [some random pharmaceutical company] for not having the cure for cancer today.
As for “justify why do you need to upgrade whole operating system to get ie9″ I want to say that there could be a lot of reasons. Maybe the hardware acceleration is not possible on XP, maybe the install needs some specific configuration, maybe … who knows. And who cares, why wouldn’t you upgrade your 10 year old OS. You update your computer every 2 years anyway, and all new computers have the latest OS.
David Aimi
July 12th, 2012 4:21 pm@Will, I’m sorry buddy, but when you said “Google just cares more about us… it’s not about the money” I had to throw my head back and give a good “hahahahahah…”.
Points to make note of that you were actually accurate on: Microsoft and other PCs have pioneered things like digital Word documents and Internet browsers. The software worked at the time, but how do people EXPECT it to transcend 15+ years? The answer is it shouldn’t. To me, this warrants something to COMPLAIN about. Google has not done anything new or innovative in these fields. They took what everyone else has already done, and applied a big budget on making it better than the competition. Believe it or not, Google has a knack for not being original.
IE has been a terrible browser for two decades, and with a company budget that Microsoft has that IS SOMETHING TO COMPLAIN about. Others have complained they “have listened”, and you’re partially right. Again, it took them two decades of still trying to shove proprietary browsers at us to realize this. Being a front end developer for the majority of my life I can attest that developing for IE browsers has not been a pleasant experience.
Rant being said, I do look forward to future releases of the IE browser and DO think Microsoft is coming around. But that does not mean I don’t have the right to complain about the time I wasted dancing around their crappy old browsers.
People hold less of a grudge then you think, its just a matter of budgets, deadlines, and accommodations that had to be made. As people are wising up to browsers, IE will have to compet or else their market share will disappear.
Ziku
July 13th, 2012 7:09 amLOL what?!
You don’t seriously believe that do you? SMH
Will
July 13th, 2012 12:01 pmI’m sorry, maybe some people don’t get sarcasm… I should explain.
My point was to address the previous fact “Microsoft doesn’t want users to upgrade their browser because they don’t make money out of it”. Read the whole thread again please (maybe add a sarcastic tone).
Dustan Curtis
July 12th, 2012 8:35 pmBing as the default search on every installation of IE? Seems like the motivation (money!) is right there.
Colin Wiseman
July 12th, 2012 8:33 amI hate to admit it, sometimes you can build something that works cross browser, but check IE6 or 7 and it’s broken. And it’s broken because IE6/7 is rightly unforgiving with your HTML. I find that new browsers try to fix your HTML for you, remove tags that are broken, or styles that are in correct (noticed when checking HTML via firebug). And fixing it in IE6 helps other browsers.
And i have found fixes in IE6 are generally only { _display:inline; } to get it working. Keeping HTML and CSS clean and simple for the most part will work cross browsers with little hacks required. Not all websites need to be HTML5 showcases.
But I still wish IE would crawl into a corner and die.
Keiron Lowe
July 12th, 2012 10:21 amCompletely agree, a lot of problems coming from IE6/7 are to do with bad code, and even when problems do arise, it’s not that difficult to fix, like you said, just using { _display:inline; } works a treat.
L.
July 12th, 2012 3:29 pmRight and you would know because ?
if your css dates back to 1947, sure there’s no problem with IE 6 7 , same for your js.
Indeed, if you try to do nothing but html1.0, those browsers are just fine.
We’re in 2012, css3 html5 ajax are the core web technologies, and they don’t work properly on ANY internet explorer version.
Zach
July 12th, 2012 5:30 pmHTML5 and CSS3 are fringe at this point, not core. They aren’t standards. Microsoft is doing us all a favor by waiting a bit to get the standards right, rather then experimental features that have a good chance of changing.
Besides, it all depends on the scope of your project. If I’m doing an experimental site for myself, yes I can play around and whine about MS’s lack of features.
If I’m doing a site for a politician (which I have recently) I’m going to go to the standard, HTML4 and CSS2 which is accepted and works across almost all browsers.
L.
July 16th, 2012 10:14 amWell good for you, I’m not in websites but in applications that use a browser as thin client, that fact makes V8′s speed extremely relevant, and almost every single feature that chrome offers useful.
Now what you don’t seem to realize is that your html4/css2 is an inferior choice driven by compatibility issues, as believe me your site would be much better and cleaner if it was 5/3 instead.
So why not take an active part in the ecosystem, offer chrome frame to ie users and use modern stuff so we can ALL move forward and eventually have a decent programming experience around the web tool.
Ilhan Negis
July 24th, 2012 9:14 am“I’m going to go to the standard, HTML4 and CSS2 which is accepted and works across almost all browsers.”
tell me more about “almost” please,
pleeeeeezzzeeee enlight us, what is “almost”?
doing a favor eh?
Tiago Coelho
July 12th, 2012 11:49 amI have to disagree. For a long time i made intranet apps that only had to work on IE, and in fact they did only work on IE, after each IE upgrade I made changes to support the new IE, and… suddenly other browsers almost fully work without additional effort. That means that IE6 was indeed reading code incorrectly. It also means that IE9 is nothing like IE6! I am really happy to have IE9 today, even though I would prefer if it supported some stuff that other browsers already do, and if it would upgrade automatically to IE10, and if IE10 and IE11… would come out faster.
Bottom line: IE9 is very good, very easy to support. IE6 was not rightly unforgiving with your HTML.
David Aimi
July 12th, 2012 4:27 pmGood points. IE6 was ok for when it first came out, it wasn’t the best but it worked for the internet at the time. The problem with it was how long its life-cycle lasted, that’s all. The problem was less with IE and more with companies adopting standards like banks and insurance agencies making proprietary “IE only” applications. This is what caused The Great IE6 Depression as I call it.
Zach
July 12th, 2012 5:45 pm“and if IE10 and IE11… would come out faster.”
This is nitpicking, and nothing against you, but it annoys me that people think you can’t upgrade/add features to software without adding a major version number. Why couldn’t it just be 10, 10.1, 10.1.5, 10.2, etc? As long as the upgrades come, who cares about the major version number? Shouldn’t that be reserved for large overhauls?
David Aimi
July 12th, 2012 9:11 pmYou read what he wrote wrong, Zach. He mentioned he wanted automatic version downloading, implying users would get the browsers and features faster.
Zach
July 13th, 2012 6:20 pmI’m not disagreeing with auto downloading. I just nitpicked one line about versions.
kayan
July 12th, 2012 4:53 pmWhen I discover something is broken in IE6/7, I first look to see if it’s bad code, and often I can make the code valid and fix its appearance in old browsers in one stroke. But sometimes it doesn’t work, and I end resorting to browser specific hacks (like the _display:inline you mentioned).
This doesn’t mean old IE browsers are actually better at enforcing good code – it does just as much as any browser to try to render pages with mistakes. The reason why it is different is because old browsers have inconsistent methods of rendering bad code.
In HTML5, there are guidelines for how browsers should render bad code. This is a huge improvement, in my opinion, because it separates browser compatibility from code validation. The best way to make sure code error free is still to validate it – seeing how code fails in various old browsers is not a precise way to find coding errors, and a it’s a pain.
S. Emerson
July 12th, 2012 8:34 amMight be aging myself here, but, we use to have to provide an alternative for those who did not have Flash. No one does that now (well a really low percentage if there are people who do do that). I see this all the time because I have a browser without Flash installed for testing purposes.
People don’t use the no script tag either. They just assume everyone has scripting turned on.
Using hacks is not the solution either. When we went from IE6 to IE7 there were tonnes of VIP sites that were broken.
Showing notes like “Get a real browser” just send people away. Designers and developers need to understand that not everyone that uses the net is a Geek, hence they don’t have the latest greatest browser or other “cool” stuff.
Daniel
July 12th, 2012 8:34 am“Let me say that again: they rebuilt the browser from scratch.”
So? IE9 has made gains, but from a rendering/standards support angle (which in my opinion is the only area that matters in this kind of discussion, just saying before someone goes “Hardware acceleration!11″) it is where other browsers were a few years ago. IE9 deserves to be lumped in with those other browsers.
Why did they feel the need to rebuild their engine from scratch… why not just use WebKit? It’s vanity. IE9 could have been where other browsers are TODAY as opposed to 2-3 years ago. And this attitude that we’re supposed to just forgive and forget because they made some changes is really harmful I think. It took a long time to give IE the stink that it has and it is extremely well earned. If we start muddling the message now and telling people IE is okay again, we’re putting ourselves in a vulnerable position where IE could gain back marketshare and Microsoft could get complacent again. Furthermore, what exactly has Microsoft done to earn this forgiveness? It took them losing an extreme amount of marketshare to even make this effort. It’s too little, too late. Their other fix was to put out a condescending ad campaign to try to shame people into silence about how crappy IE is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DbgiOCTQts (Trigger warning: this might make you rage)
“…just represent constraints to the problems that we have to solve. It is from within constraints that creativity is born.”
This statement almost makes me physically ill. This completely washes away all the pains and ridiculous hacks and workarounds that developers/designers have had to use because of IE over the years. Remember when you couldn’t even use alpha transparency in a PNG without installing some convoluted library? We worked with these “constraints” for far too long, and we had no choice. You sound like someone with Stockholm Syndrome.
The move to html5 and css3 has been so long and difficult for modern browsers, and even now I still can’t write standards based semantic markup without having to worry about installing a bunch of workarounds for IE.
This still affects me on every single project I do. I’m so sick of it. I’ve been making websites since 2005 and “will it work in IE? How can I cascade these fixes to each specific browser?” has been something I’ve had to think about on every single project I’ve ever done. If IE ever moves into a space where that’s no longer an issue, then maybe we can start talking about not complaining about IE anymore. But guess what? Nobody will be complaining then.
Will
July 12th, 2012 9:57 amYou should be ashamed as a developer. Basically, you’re saying “I don’t like part of my job and I wish it would go away”. Grow up, of course there are things that we don’t like. You know what? Don’t support it!
Besides, Webkit is not perfect and one of the reasons it’s so good and getting better is because of competition. There would be no Chrome upgrades if everyone used Chrome.
Daniel
July 12th, 2012 10:08 am“Basically, you’re saying “I don’t like part of my job and I wish it would go away”.”
Nope, I’m saying it shouldn’t be part of my job. That’s the whole point. Being a web designer/developer should mean being able to write standards compliant code and have it work, barring perhaps a few experimental effects that maybe use vendor prefixes. IE is the main reason that is not a reality, period. I don’t get what your argument here is, that because things are this way we aren’t supposed to dislike them/want them to change?
“You know what? Don’t support it!”
That’s not always a viable option when working for clients or for an employer. Hence the sentence “We worked with these “constraints” for far too long, and we had no choice.”
Your counter argument seems to be “Suck it up” instead of actually addressing problems. My criticisms are valid and this is a real problem, and that isn’t a valid response. Collectively as an industry we’ve been sucking it up for a very long time.
Will
July 12th, 2012 10:45 amSo vendor prefixes are ok even if they work differently from the industry standards but you get mad if you have to implement hacks for a 10 year old browser when your job requires you to? It’s 10 years old! Of course it needs hacks.
And btw, I don’t use IE, I use Chrome. Complaining about it is ok but saying we should scrap it completely instead of finding solutions is just not the way forward.
Daniel
July 12th, 2012 11:45 amI qualified my support for vendor prefixes. I’m okay with them being used to test out experimental implementations of features from new standards.
Regarding fixing for IE, you might have a compelling point if IE6 wasn’t seen as a bad browser only a few years after its release. That also doesn’t explain how 7 and 8 (and 9) were bad too. When I said that fixing for a browser specific rendering problem wasn’t my job, I was talking on a large scale. Every engine does have its quirks, and every so often I will have to fix something for Gecko but it is rare and usually limited to one issue. And it doesn’t happen on every single project.
It’s their job to make a rendering engine that conforms to standards. This has never been about one or two issues when you code a page, it’s about viewing your page in IE and it being completely broken. Yes, you learn to avoid certain things to save you grief as time goes on, but what kind of awful habit is that? Forming code habits based on a bug in a rendering engine that wasn’t fixed because Microsoft had a bad attitude/awful release cycle?
“Complaining about it is ok but saying we should scrap it completely instead of finding solutions is just not the way forward.”
Actually, scraping old programs in favor of new ones has to be the way forward. For IE in general, until they produce a product that is truly on par with competitors in a rendering sense, AND manage to keep up for a length of time, it should still be considered a problem.
And frankly, the evidence doesn’t point to Microsoft being willing/able to do that. The fact that they’re touting HTML5 support as a feature despite lacking very basic stuff and that you can’t get it on XP doesn’t show that they truly get it.
Will
July 12th, 2012 3:55 pmI give you that. Their life cycle is awful and not having automatic upgrades is even worse.
However your taking it to the extreme. Yes, IE6 is bad and 7, and 8. But IE9 is comparable to other browsers with a good browsing experience. Plus IE10 is coming this fall. There is no reason to go ‘all webkit’. That was the problem with IE6: http://css.dzone.com/articles/why-webkit-new-ie6-trap-vendor
Will
July 12th, 2012 4:05 pmOh and btw, IE6 rocked when it was released. Just how webkit rocks now.
Steve Jones
July 12th, 2012 2:31 pm“It shouldn’t be part of my job” Do you pay yourself? If not, you don’t get to decide what should be part of your job. Your job is to support whatever browsers your employer/client tells you to. If this is too hard or too demeaning for you, go find an employer/client dumb enough to let your personal preferences dictate how they spend their money. Failing that, try digging ditches.
Daniel
July 12th, 2012 2:45 pmCongratulations on completely missing the point. A browser is supposed to ship with support for the standards, that is the job of the people who develop it. A few quirks here and there are fine, but IE has completely missed the mark consistently for over a decade.
My job is to write clean, semantic code according to the same standard that the browser is supposed to abide by. It shouldn’t be having to continually make up for the failings of a rendering engine. That’s what I mean by that phrase that you so delicately cherry picked.
Also I love how you’re acting like I’m entitled for wanting to spend my time writing clean, modern code without having to worry about supporting a browser that is 5 or 10 years old. That’s right, it is my moral failings instead of the colossal failings of Microsoft. Also your implication that this is simply a “personal preference” (and a weird one at that) is pure gaslighting.
It may have been the case in the early 2000s and before that browsers rendered wildly differently, but it is not so anymore. Rendering engines may have their minute differences, but the vast majority of what anybody writes will render correctly in Gecko and WebKit. This is not the case even with the most current Trident iteration.
David
July 12th, 2012 3:57 pmSteve (Ballmer) Jones over here definitely thinks in profits over innovation. You are what’s wrong with the web development world. I bet you’re one of those “everyone gets a trophy for trying” kinds of people. By your logic, we shouldn’t be using Vista or Windows 7 because our clients should dictate how we work and clearly they don’t care about development STANDARDS. I personally believe all contractors should include an IE tax “You need this website to work with non-HTML5 compliant browsers, +8%”.
Marcello di Simone
July 12th, 2012 5:25 pmIf that’s the way you would describe your job, at least ask your employer to place your desk on a cotton field and to give you a nice whipping from time to time.
Daniel
July 12th, 2012 12:01 pmThanks Daniel, that’s exactly my point of view.
Ian
July 12th, 2012 12:34 pmIn a way I agree with you. I’ve been doing it since 1993 (Geocities woohoo) and can tell you you’re always going to be dealing with this.
The best way to get around it is:
1) Stop trying to make the site look the “exact same” in every browser.
2) Stop showing the client photoshop mockups. If you do this then they’re going to expect the design to look “exactly” like this.
3) Present your concepts/mockups in the browser. Send them the link and let them look for themselves.
4) Offer an adaptive style sheet, and show them the site adjusting itself on an iphone/android/tablet.
5) Educate your clients about why using new technology and “forgiving” the slight differences in older browsers is a good idea.
Once you get over the “exact” thing, you’ll be much happier and more productive.
Nol Franklin
July 12th, 2012 2:21 pmCompletely agree with your points, Ian!
L.
July 12th, 2012 3:35 pmMy current “solution” is a perfectly gorgeous version in chrome, that is usually very fast to port to firefox, and then a “bugfix css” for internet explorer, that is more or less ugly compared to the chrome version, but just works.
I think it’s fair to have crappy support on crappy browsers, i’d even go as far as calling it graceful degradation.
Vincenzo Acinapura
July 12th, 2012 8:42 amPeople that made Internet Explorer 8 demonstrated not to be good software engineers (or, perhaps working at Microsoft makes software engineers dumb). That number of bugs and incorrect interpretations of the standards is not acceptable.
It is normal, as you said, that people complains about a mediocre piece of software. But I think is not normal for a software house to keep that software around for 10 years. That’s the point. 6% of the Internet (including clients I work for) is still using IE6, sorry, for me this fact is enough to hate Internet Explorer (and people using it) for the rest of my life. Luckily every remaining browser on the market is better.
@Daniel: Stockholm Syndrome. That’s Right.
Jonathon
July 12th, 2012 8:44 amI admit I spent years trash-talking Internet Explorer in its stagnant phase, but I was quick to take back my scathing remarks once 9 and the 10 beta were released. They’re not perfect, but they’re colossal upgrades from 8, and they even have some advantages other browsers lack.
The problem with 9 and 10 is that all those millions of people who don’t upgrade to Windows 7 are stuck with IE8, which isn’t enough because, though much better than 6 or 7, its limitations are still quite challenging to code against. IE upgrades are free, but Windows upgrades certainly are not; however, Firefox is still available for Windows XP SP3, and the last time I checked, Opera worked as far back as Windows 2000, so if you’re still using Windows XP, I will recommend a non-IE browser. It’s quite frustrating to have to cater to people who use 10-or-more-year-old operating systems, but that’s still the reality for many of my clients, since I often work with tradespeople and Mom-and-Pops who have older systems.
Many people have taken this IE hate too far, though, and made it personal. Microsoft apologised and made better browsers after 6 and 7, so let’s let the past be the past.
Will
July 12th, 2012 10:49 amI completely agree and I have met many developers who simply don’t want to see or hear anything about Internet Explorer, simply to go with the masses. They say “Chrome is not perfect but that’s understandable because it’s Chrome. IE9 and 10 are a huge improvement but it’s too little because it’s IE.”
L.
July 12th, 2012 3:38 pmGet back to modern tech, you’ll realize that even if ie9 is 10 years better than ie 7 8 whatever, it’s still 5 years behind chrome, as firefox is 2 or 3 years behind chrome as well.
IE is still not on the same scale as ff / chrome, and ff is getting worse by the year, as if all the talent had left for webkit, or as if someone had paid mozilla to turn it into the next IE.
Kenny
July 12th, 2012 4:02 pmFor me, this highlights the real problem with Internet Explorer. Regardless of how much better 9 or 10 may be (which they are), IE is built by a company who’s real interest is selling Windows and Windows-related products. With XP still holding around 30% market-share, their decision to not allow IE 9/10 upgrades is really holding back the web. As they continue to release new versions of their OS, I simply can’t trust that current Vista users might be stuck on IE 10 or Windows 7 users might eventually be stuck at IE 12 if they choose not to upgrade. There’s an obvious conflict of interest here and Microsoft is clearly doing what’s best for them, not the web in general.
Jaffer Haider
July 12th, 2012 8:46 amGreat article and thank you for taking a stand against all the IE bashing going on around here. I sincerely hope developers and designers adopt the perspective you’re talking about and stop with the incessant whining. Back in the day I used to be a huge IE6 basher … some of the most colorful insults in our team were reserved for IE6 … but now I take everything in stride.
If you’re using a framework, writing clean CSS and not trying anything groundbreaking, supporting old browsers really isn’t that hard.
Jesse Kivivuori
July 12th, 2012 8:51 amHave to say that this was good reading in a while.
I totally agree and this article reinforce my opinion for IE. I must say that I have agreed IE existence a long time. I dropped IE7 support a while ago because the lack of border-box(of course there is a polyfill for that but it’s kinda dirty approach). It’s THE feature that make me as a developer a happy developer. IE8 can handle it so then I can tolerate IE8.
When I develop I first make it work with Chrome. Last thing I do I check site with IE and ad few fixes to the layout if needed. If I have border-radius etc. and it lacks on IE8, I will not take that much pressure on.
Jon Edwards
July 12th, 2012 8:53 amI agree, but only in part. I think that a big frustration (and part of the problem) that hasn’t been fully discussed, is the idea that clients and marketing hacks are perpetuating the problem…
I still have would-be clients and wannabe marketers sending through briefs for, “A pixel-perfect, web 2 design for 1024×768 screens.” And, no matter how much you try and educate them about current best practices and trends, they often just want what they want. Worse still, when they get it, the certainly don’t want to have to pay more for it (responsive design, for example).
We can’t expect to sit and b*tch, moan and complain on a designer/developer-only forum like Smashing – that doesn’t often see any readers from outside the community – if we’re going to educate the general public about where the web is going.
Start educating clients, marketers and users on their level. Big name players like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Amazon and the like have only made very small steps towards muscling users onto newer browsers – but they can’t afford to lose revenue (neither can Yahoo, Teylor) so they keep supporting them.
Start offering users real incentives to move to newer browsers, rather than the promise of “a better web experience” – they don’t know any better. A couple of folk have already started doing this on e-commerce stores with “modern browser coupons”.
I don’t know. I just don’t think that this is necessarily the forum for the conversation anymore…
Jamy Golden
July 12th, 2012 8:55 am“they rebuilt the browser from scratch” – Seriously, who cares. If I built a browser from scratch and it was equal to an old version of Firefox(Firefox 2), no one would give me credit for making a sub-standard browser, it would first have to equal the other browsers before I would receive any recognition. IE9 hasn’t done this and they don’t deserve recognicion for that. “Oh IE! Well done for being one of the earliest browsers and almost catching up to the rest of the modern browsers, you’ve done a really great job!”
I don’t complain about IE7+ as browsers any more since it’s trite. I will support them and find ways to do the impossible, however, LTE IE9 aren’t modern browsers.
Wesley Martin
July 12th, 2012 8:56 amI admit that Microsoft has come along way with ie and I can’t wait for it to fully compete in regards to standards with other modern browsers, heck I even hope that ie becomes the most awesome browser ever, because truth is that would make my life much easier… but…
You said, “No one is saying you can’t use RGBA. No one is holding a gun to your head and saying don’t use CSS animations. As an engineer on the Web application you get to make decisions every single day.” Actually yes, the client is holding the gun to my head. They are the ones that say, “Why is it looking like this on my home pc (firefox lets say) and like this on my work pc (ie7 lets say)? And then the extra hours starts piling up. We have to push towards improving browser education, most people are ignorant to the fact that there are better browser, lets show them that there are, but be nice about it.
Brian J. Hall
July 12th, 2012 9:01 amI’m about 50/50 on this. Yes, if we have the time/budget, we should be supporting as many browsers as possible. So rather than complain, we should be proactive to the problems. So I see your point.
But my clients won’t.
They want to pay for a website to be built, not to have multiple websites built (which, let’s face it, is essentially what we’re doing). When we’re trying to support some of these legacy browsers with hacks, and overrides, we’re spending a good deal more time just to make things compatible (or as Louis Lazaris said, not being innovative). If the customer sees a significant market-share advantage to targeting a particular browser, then they can justify the cost. But it’s hard to convince anybody that they should just invest additional capital to get their site functional, when that’s already what they’ve paid for.
It’s a balance between being cost-competitive and being functional, and older browsers are the battleground for this balance.
Martin Chaov
July 12th, 2012 9:10 amWell, at last :)
It is not common in the web development circles to have a voice of reason. Usually developers rant about technologies that is making them do some actual work :) (supporting IE 6…7..8….. for example)
Daniel Wiklund
July 12th, 2012 9:12 amI agree with some of the points you make, but i have to say that from a designer/front-end developers point of view, IE8/IE7 (and IE6 but i haven’t used or optimized for that in ages) ARE SHIT, it is really hard to explain til a customer, why somethings just dosen’t look, behave or feel the same in IE7/8 as it does in other browsers.
They (the customers) all want cool stuff and features on their website, but lets face it, there are just somethings that are a lot harder to accomplish on IE8/7.
One of the things that causes me the biggest headaches it the poor font rendering in IE7/8, and 8 times out of 10 the customer is just not satisfied with the answer “…well it’s your old browser that is the problem…”
But IE9 on the other hand, i’m actually ok with, it has some shortcomings and stanges behaviors some times, and the CSS3 support is not that great, but it’s nothing a little workaround or fallback cold can’t fix.
So i my opinion when “Jaffer Haider” wrote:
“If you’re using a framework, writing clean CSS and not trying anything groundbreaking, supporting old browsers really isn’t that hard.”
That’s true, but a lot of times the customer want’s stuff that amazes them and are groundbreaking! we shouldn’t stop exploring new things, or stop trying to “raise the bar” on every new web project. We should encourage users/customers to upgrade their browser and let old and outdated software DIE!
Natti Bar On
July 12th, 2012 9:16 amAllow me to give you another perspective on the issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_competition_case
“Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice.”
Microsoft has been a bully and a tyrant, abusing its market dominance and customers ignorance to produce lousy software, holding back (multiple) markets, including the browser. Now, we can’t do anything about its market dominance, but we can sure work with customers ignorance by publishing posts, talking to them, etc.
I find it hard to give credence to a vendor who has abused its power for so long. So they re-wrote the browser from scratch? After the years they held the market back? Oh, let’s all cheer for their good wishes. The only reason MS is rewriting their software is because they’re left out of the game, the game of innovation which captures the hearts, minds and code of influencers.
This is MS’s DNA. Remember what they said about iPhones (people like buttons, it will fail) or iPads (no one will use it). Well after the market turns away from them, they’re “embracing” innovation. If they aren’t constantly threatened by public opinion, their products scrutinized and criticized, they’ll just resume stagnation.
Complaining is a harmful attitude, we should go and get things to work. On that I agree. But it may also be a way of educating, consumers and Microsoft, that opinion leaders still find their products sub-par, and that with choice, they just won’t use it.
In this case, complaining is EXACTLY what we should do – demand high quality service from vendors who expect us to use our products, so that they can increase their revenue.
Martin Chaov
July 12th, 2012 4:21 pmCome one man … are you serious … Let’s hit on Apple next … those bastards … they are supplying all kind of software with their operating system – movie player, music player, Safari, other iShits … etc…
You statements are you childish … Let’s tear apart Linux distributions for comming with some software and not other.
Richard Crosby
July 12th, 2012 9:18 amI couldn’t more thoroughly disagree with this article. More specifically, this quote:
“Fixating on circumstances that you can’t change isn’t a recipe for success.”
Inspired me to write this comment, because I feel as developers, its our duty to invoke change across the web.
My aim and I’m sure its shared by many, as a web developer, is to provide a great user experience to those browsing the internet. When it comes to implementing an outstanding feature of a site that has to be reduced down for users of older versions of IE, we are knowingly providing a worse experience for some people.
And what possible reason do the users of IE have to upgrade if we keep catering for their every need. Its likely that many of those users aren’t even aware that a better browser exists.
We will never get away from cross browser compatibility and dealing with browsers that cant do things others can. But there should be a cutoff point and you can guarantee I will moan at everyone and everything until that’s a reality.
Niels Matthijs
July 12th, 2012 9:19 amI think the thing to remember is that our community is slowly deteriorating because of brand favoritism. You know, Apple vs Windows, Sony vs Nintendo, The Beatles vs The Stones … such situations never result in worthwhile discussion but get stuck in continuous and meaningless bashing.
IE9 is still a rather limited browser, but only because it lacks support for an ongoing list of non-standards. Apart from that, it’s a solid and well-behaved browser.
People also seem to forget that even the newest version of Safari, FF and Chrome have their own list of regrettable bugs. Be it age old css2 solutions (Webkit just now fixed a very simple bug with floats, margins and overflows – something that actually works seamlessly in IE7 – while Safari is still suffering from it) or flaky implementations of css3 propositions. Sure enough we have css3 animation and pseudo-element support in Webkit, but combine the two and nothing happens. Basic implementations usually work just fine, but once you want to do something a tad more challenging you start to run into bug-ridden edge cases.
Progressive enhancement really is the key. Make sure that the information on your site remains accessible in a quick and usable way, no matter what browser people are using (I myself use the 1% rule – everything above gets support). Suggesting people to upgrade can’t hurt of course, but stuffing it down their throats is even more irritating that flash ads. Browser preference is either due to personal taste or technical limitations and it’s not something that web developers should decide for others. That’s part of what the web is all about.
Ralph Marchant
July 12th, 2012 11:52 amHas anyone considered that there are a large number of highly locked down users out there that can’t change their browsers? I work for a government department that until recently has locked it’s workstations down so tight that everyone bar a select few were forced to use IE6/7 to access websites for their work. Until government bodies actually have a strategy for updating technology effectively there is always going to be a requirement to provide backward compatibility for the huge number of public sector workers enslaved to obsolete browsers. In short, forgive the little guys who may not have a choice in browsers, it’s the bureaucracies they work for that need to make the updates!
Georges
July 12th, 2012 9:31 amGreat article.
Please note that i’m not an IE fan and yes i hate it. But if you are so ignorant to a point where you still use IE6, than definitely it’s your problem. And you don’t deserve to be using the web.
This is like carrying a water gun, and willing to shoot airplanes.
stefano
July 12th, 2012 9:36 amIE is like a zombie for me. Dead looong ago and still crawling. Every time I see the IE logo or worse-case I have to start this “browser” I remember: Isn’t there a W3C standard? And WHY is there a standard? Ok IE 6… it was the “early” web. But IE 7, 8, 9, even 10 and 11 the number doesn’t matter. They never fit the standard.
I love to design and programm websites, it sometimes was a big challange to get the right results for every browser. Now we have another challange to fit all devices. For customers you have to optimize the site for every modern browser, that’s no question. But I’m soooo tired to put my time in the website for some annoying IE fixes, workarounds or hacks. Sorry but this is no (modern) browser for me. Who drives a car whitout wheels? You stuck all the time but you still have this car more then 10 years?
I did not know they build IE from scratch – makes me even more laugh. In our business, technology is growing and changing very fast. Now tell me how can such a crappy product survive that long? I know because of the “PC evolution” a lot of IE’s are out there, and still a lot of IE version 6. They loose their market share, thankfully. Do you have another reason for that?
Steve Harwood
July 12th, 2012 9:37 amThe fact of the matter is, as designers we must work with all manner of browsers in order to give our clients the best possible audience for their sites. If my client says a large part of their audience uses IE6 – so be it …
Hugo Giraudel
July 12th, 2012 9:38 amHi ! First of all, thanks for the read, and for the last 2 or 3 articles on SmashingMag, they were such good writes. SmashingMag, keepin’ up the good work. ;)
Secondly, even if I understand your (Nicholas C. Zakas) point of view, we must admit that *the* browser which is constantly pissing us off since the dawn of web is Internet Explorer, whatever version. It used to be IE6, or even IE7, and sooner or later it will be IE8 or IE9.
But actually I’m not blaming Microsoft for those browsers, because they use to be good browsers in the past, right. I’m blaming Microsoft for their poor and not future-proof way of managing their products.
The fact is that every Internet Explorer version is made to stay for like 10 years (IE6 launched in 2001), and that’s the problem, especially in an age where you get lost or outdated after a few months of inactivity.
Internet Explorer is the only major browser which has 5 completly different versions on the way. If no mistake, Firefox has 2 major versions (3.6 and 4+), Chrome has only one, Opera has 2 (11- and 12), and Safari has 2 as well (4 and 5). And 5 for IE (6, 7, 8, 9, 10), each one with its own bug, and its own support of every single feature.
And finally that is the problem. Not Microsoft browsers but Microsoft policy. Microsoft should auto-updates their browser so there is no more IE6, no more IE7, no more IE8, and soon no more IE9 (even if I have to admit IE9 is not a bid deal to deal with for now, but it will in the future).
This is the way product policy should be handle : when you build a product clearly superior to the old one, either you update the old one, or you take it back from sell (or acquisition).
So Internet Explorer is clearly holding back the web, but not necessarly because of its lack of features, because of its lack of updates.
Having said that, the Internet Explorer’s team seems to be slower to build up new features into their browser. I don’t say they suck, I’m just saying they look slower than other browsers’ teams. Even if IE10 looks great, it’s clearly way behind Chrome or Firefox latest. But, that’s not the point. :)
See you !
Edit : oh, by the way, sorry if there are some mistakes in my post: I’m French. :)
Bertie
July 12th, 2012 9:42 amYou say that “..if you build things correctly, your sites and applications work in them all. They might not necessarily work exactly the same in them all, but they should still be able to work.”. Then, think about text/box shadows, rounded corners, PNG transparencies and many other things that force developers to implement hacks (even so, it doesn’t look the same), because they are simply not supported in IE < 9, not to mention sluggish Javascript performance.
That translates into many development hours. The logical option would be to offer a 30% discount in exchange of dropping support for older browsers, and that's something I'm considering seriously.
Admiteddly, IE9 is somewhat better, but the adoption rate is very slow, as it runs only with Vista and newer OSs, and a lot of people still uses XP, and they will not upgrade until buying new hardware.
Naresh Babu
July 12th, 2012 9:45 amI was wondering whether someone will voice out the counter arguments for those two articles earlier by Mr.Louis. It has been a great educative read for a budding developer like me. And yes I agree with you that with constraints the true creativity is born.
ThAL
July 12th, 2012 9:47 am“Why fixating on circumstances that you can’t change isn’t a recipe for success.”
I agree, but I may disagree on how to alleviate that fixation. Some parts of your article suggest one should stop complaining and just accept things, even if one of those things is supporting IE6. I think one should stop complaining, too. But I think they should find closure and relief through the act of dropping support for browsers that have aged beyond the point of reason. Not every developer will agree that IE6 has gotten to that point, but I feel that that is because that sect of people never will. IE6 could a quarter of a century old. If even 10 people were still using it, those developers will look down on anyone who doesn’t factor it into their projects.
“I would still never let anyone that I worked with get too buried in complaining about them. If it’s our job to support those browsers then that’s just part of our job.”
Keyword: IF. Just borrowing from my comment on one of those older articles: “Base it on each case. Are you making something a lot of people at some company will visit? People stuck in some Microsoft intranet where IE6 is all they can use? Or are you making an online store for a local car decal shop that would be fine and dandy without IE6 support? In the end, it depends. It depends more on the site, whom it’s for, and who will be visiting it most.” In short, I don’t agree that IE6, or maybe even 7, should be supported just because even 1 person on the planet uses them or just because they exist at all. One group of developers will say I’m being a disservice to the profession, another will say I’m trying to express tough love to put the final bullet into a a browsers that’s so old that continuing to support it goes from lingering dedication to bordering on ocd. Both sides have a point.
Hutch
July 12th, 2012 4:45 pmI still get people with an ie 5.5 user agent hitting my website… should we be developing for them too?
stx
July 12th, 2012 9:52 amOne thing I don’t see mentioned often in these articles is the corporate aspects of upgrading, I’ve been in several big companies that are bound to old versions of browsers as they have apps developed by contractors that only work with something like IE6. There generally isn’t budget to replace these as they may have expensive in the first place, and corporate interests don’t really care about web standards as employees are at their desks to work. Even if an employee is allowed something like Chrome on their desktop, they’re still using IE primarily.
Patrick H
July 12th, 2012 9:54 amI will never forgive MS For all the wasted hours doing fixes for IE6 in the past adding to my work load. Crappy browsers, crappy company attitude that only kick starts them into ‘building a new browser from scratch’ when they are being left behind, they should have done that many years ago.
Sam Sabey
July 12th, 2012 9:57 amClearly, you don’t pay the bill to support IE.
And progressive enhancement is a crock. We build awesome web apps using the most modem tools we can. It’s expensive and impossible to support IE and even 9 and likely 10.
When I pay the bill I don’t what to have a host of windows machines to find that the JavaScript engine in IE 9 is just broken.
I’m tired of all Microsoft web browsers, and supporting them is not an option when they can’t be used to develop against. Yes, like the back end I use a unix based development environment, osx to be particular. Until Microsoft makes a browser, like ALL the other browsers and can be installed on the development environment they remain owners of a second rate browser.
I suppose that’s why they invented the chrome viewer?
Sam, @samotage
Barry van Oudtshoorn
July 12th, 2012 10:27 am“Until Microsoft makes a browser, like ALL the other browsers and can be installed on the development environment they remain owners of a second rate browser.”
I’m still waiting for a Linux version of Safari, too.
“We build awesome web apps using the most modem tools we can. It’s expensive and impossible to support IE and even 9 and likely 10.”
Perhaps this speaks more to your methodology for development than anything else. Is the goal to get your content through to people, or to entertain them with animations and transitions and the like? If the former, then support for a wide range of browsers should come as standard; if the latter, you’re immediately cutting off many of your users. This is akin to building a desktop application which only runs on the latest version of an OS: if a significant portion of users are using an older version, you’re simply dismissing them out of hand. Sure, it’s not necessarily as much fun to start with the “old and boring” rather than the “new and exciting”, but it certainly seems the more logical choice — at least to me.
L.
July 12th, 2012 3:03 pmOld and tired logic though.
1. Who wants safari when you got chrome ????
2. Contrary to popular belief, most of the people who will buy online or make your page views, are likely to not use the default browser.
Most of the IE statistics are people forced by work, or total tech agnostics who will not buy anything online or use your brand new service.
Besides, everybody installed flash, so you can make them install chrome frame if you feel like being compatible -
The only issue is that you will still have firefox and safari as inferior browsers.
Dan Voyce
July 12th, 2012 10:05 amPersonally I feel we would be much better off if Microsoft just stopped developing Internet Explorer. It would make our life as developers a lot easier, and would mean we could focus more on the future than the past!
If they want a browser so bad why don’t they go and buy Opera and stick there label on it?
kayan
July 12th, 2012 10:43 pmSeriously, Microsoft could just fork Chrome or Firefox, stick a blue E icon on it, and call it a day. And they could even release it on XP too! Everyone saves time and money, including Microsoft. This win-win solution is so obvious! But alas, continuously churning new iterations of tragically flawed software is too ingrained in Microsoft’s culture for them to ever stop. Microsoft just needs to die already to make room for less pathetic companies.
Bora Yalçın
July 12th, 2012 10:17 amI just disagree!
Progress of IE in the market is against the evolution theory itself! If the real world is like progression of IE we would have the siber tooth tigers and our cute felix domesticus(it is IE9 by your definition) in the same neigbourhood.
All those hours spent to add patches(no! that cannot be called fixing) for IE 6-7-8 is not creativity or recipe for success, its just a waste of time. Time is wasted because of bad decisions of some people in Microsoft. Let’s not play Polyanna, let’s not take all the blame to ourselfs.
Barry van Oudtshoorn
July 12th, 2012 10:20 amAs the lead developer on a very large web application, I was admittedly very happy when we were able to drop support for IE7. Now, we officially support IE8 and IE9. And to be honest, IE8 is a pretty solid browser. Sure, it’s missing a few shiny features (gradients, shadows, transitions, rounded corners, and the like), but these really shouldn’t be deal-breakers.
Developing for IE8, I very rarely, if ever, run into JavaScript issues, and what CSS glitches I do come across can be fixed by the judicious application of “.no-foo” styles courtesy of Modernizr. Yes, I do still have to maintain a separate IE8 stylesheet, but it’s only around 100 lines — and the main stylesheets for the app come to around 18000 lines.
I think that too many of us are afraid to say to clients that it’s OK for things to look different on different browsers. We’ve been handed great analogies on a platter (like Nicholas’ TV analogy in the talk) which we shouldn’t hesitate to use. And the reality is that for 99% of users, they only have one browser: if they see your work without rounded corners, they’ll just assume that that’s how it’s meant to look! It’s certainly not necessary to fill your pages with shims and polyfills to ensure that everything’s as close to pixel-perfect across browsers, anyway. And I’ve not heard too many people complaining that box-shadows are rendered slightly different by each major engine…
Rob Farr
July 12th, 2012 10:22 amI think a lot of it is down to IE’s release schedule and method of updating.
philip
July 12th, 2012 10:26 amI have a netbook with only one core, a 10 inch screen, and no gpu, – it runs windows XP. Over time, MS has offered via their automatic updates the ability to install the latest version of IE up to the point where my hardware is not good enough to do so; thus I am running IE 8. My computer is also not capable of running Windows 7. At present, I am able to use IE 8 to purchase anything I want on the Internet; e.g. Amazon, eBay, and all the other big boy sites. If you want me to buy something from you, and you don’t support IE 8, you are not going to get my money. At some point your company’s financial people may decide that it is worth while to tell your current people to support IE 8 or to hire some new people to support IE 8. What’s important – having some fancy thing that doesn’t impress me, or making money?
L.
July 12th, 2012 3:08 pmYou sir, should try chrome.
It runs far faster and better on your joke of a computer. (really, whoever decided you could ship atom and XP on the same box must’ve been laughing at the poor users)
So what’s important to you ? remaining a tech agnostic ? buying overpriced crappy netbooks ? or getting your shit bought online cheap and fast ?
That’s the whole discussion here, why you should be using chrome, for your own damn benefit as a user, for your data security and for compatibility with ALL the friggin web.
Kalen
July 20th, 2012 4:23 pmAnother thing that gets ignored by web users (that L. hinted at) is security.
I can tell you how many times I kept having to restore disk images on office computers that were using IE8 that kept getting infected. My bosses logic ran that we need to stay with IE because it was easier for IT to manage.
:facepalm:
I bumped these users to chrome, against the bosses wishes at first. No more restoring disk images all the time now. He is a believer finally and my coworkers love chrome.
There really is no good reason to stick with IE8. I’m sorry. Unless i didn’t have to support it, I would never, never user it.
Christoph Ernst
July 12th, 2012 10:27 amThanks for that article and a different perspective on this issue. But there’s two things that came to my mind when reading your article.
Your wrote: “They might not necessarily work exactly the same in them all, but they should still be able to work. There is absolutely nothing preventing you from using new features in your Web applications, that’s what progressive enhancement is all about.”
1. Let’s face it, most of us are working for customers and while there’s surely the possibility to explain browser issues (like Jon Edwards said) they just want the modern product to look the same in all browsers. Whatever it takes. It may sound a bit harsh, but most clients don’t give a damn about progressive enhancement. So I’m still bound to using workarounds, when it comes to IE.
2. While Microsoft may have enhanced IE, there’s still no satisfying CSS3 support. Just because they rebuild it from scratch there’s no reason for applause, because it’s still missing some features that are key.
L.
July 12th, 2012 3:10 pmYou assume far too much, namely that you can build a modern product that runs on IE.
It’s been a while since that was possible. Just js speed on IE and firefox puts them lightyears behind V8-equipped browsers.
And every other workaround you add for ie, makes the ie version even slower, and I haven’t talked about selectors yet …
jakob
July 12th, 2012 10:28 amOne more angle that is probably not one of the regulars of Smashing Magazine:
The web is not just for professionals.
This whole “it’s your job to fix these things” attitude stinks to high heaven for everyone who is not, in fact, a professional web designer. Why on earth should creative access to the one infrastructure that has become all but ubiquitous ever since its inception be restricted to specialists? The web is the foundation for basically every information distributed on the internet now. Yet, knowing html and some basic styling fundamentals does not allow one to partake in distributing information as one would assume when following standards protocol. What folly is this?
I am not a professional web designer and yet I would like to produce some content on the web, now and then. This is all but impossible for the layman to do, unless she accepts that whatever standard-informed personal home page or self hosted information repository she puts out will not work as intended, because the brokenness of the web gets perpetuated for a multitude of browser generations. That is a real problem to a whole demographic, much larger than the select few who know their way around said brokenness anyway. This whole “progressive enhancement” thing is really an ugly beast of a necessary compromise with the broken present state of events, not something we should aspire to become a standard practice of a better future.
And from a professionals perspective: is it not also ridiculous to put artificial constraints on your work that are merely a matter of historic accident (aka browser wars), amounting to putting a spanner in the works just for the sake of it?
kayan
July 12th, 2012 11:15 pmThat’s an extremely good point.
When this article says it is “our job” to make sites work IE, I don’t like it, but I understand where he’s coming from as a web developer.
But to say this to an average person who just wants to make a website? There is nothing right about it. That’s a completely unfair and unacceptable barrier for those who want to create in the Internet age.
There should be normal gap to cross to learn how to make websites, not “double margin float” gap.
Thomas Nielsen
July 12th, 2012 10:31 amI have absolutely no preferences as which browser I use. I use what is readily available on the system at hand. There are web sites that don’t work with Chrome, with Firefox, with Konqueror, with IE, with Lynx with Opera with whatever. That is the reality of things. The problem is not IE or indeed any of the mentioned browsers. The problem is *web designers not taking their job seriously* or commissioners not wanting to pay to support *what their customers use*. That (!) is the bleeding problem. If a web site doesn’t work in the browser I use, I don’t go and install another one. I leave the site! That’s it. End of problem. This happens pretty much with every single browser on the market and with Linux, Windows, Android, OIS and OS X. The annoying part is that these problems are so easy to fix. No – not by bullying the visitor into changing their browser of choice but by supporting the visitor – because when all is all it is the visitor who is the customer. So stop all this pseudo-religious whining and get back to work, will ‘ya!
L.
July 12th, 2012 10:33 amQuite often, when developping web stuff, the only half-decent option is a bleeding-edge feature, even in very basic features such as “export this html table to csv 100% client-side”, the other options being ugly hackish workarounds.
Currently, if you try to use that “smart” option, you can only use chrome, because firefox is 3 years behind and ie about 5.
So yes, ie9 is the best ie ever, like windows 7 is the best windows ever, but they’re still relatively inadequate for *many* things.
I, for one, welcome our new google overlords, and encourage every browser user to vote with their wallet.
The more browsers move forward, the less every website will cost to create and maintain, the more features, the more everything.
As such, I think everyone should start using chrome now, since it’s currently the fastest most featureful browser, by a very long shot – not to support chrome, not to support google, but to show browser makers that we prefer browsers that don’t suck ass.
Matt Nolan
July 12th, 2012 10:41 amI find the argument interesting, but I don’t think progressive enhancement wins the argument on closed web development i.e. intranet web development. It my opinion it only applies to the internet where any man and his dog can visit your website/web application. So I guess I’m forking the conversation a little with my comments.
For intranet development I think the focus should be on the adoption of progressive technology. It’s large companies that have outdated models of only allowing one browser because it’s easier to administer a standard operating environment and traditionally this is Windows and IE. Why is it so difficult for them to bundle Google Chrome or Firefox in addition to IE?
Development solves business problems. Administration does not. It’s crazy for companies that are so cost focused that the cheapest and best solution is to develop for a non IE platform, yet they dictate that it must support IE7+. Madness, it’s the managers of this world that need auto updates to their brain!
We swapped the horse for a car, I think we need to do the same with IE, and hopefully some day Microsoft itself. That is unless MS finally builds a car I want to drive.
Rant over… apologies if I offended any managers reading this comment, it was my intention to!
L.
July 12th, 2012 3:15 pmThe reason behind your issue, is all the “fake IT people” who work in IT, with at most enough skills to use windows XP with one format C every year.
coja1
July 12th, 2012 10:49 amI’m sorry but your article is just way off the mark.
IE9 *IS NOT* a good modern browser at all and *IS* holding back the web – probably the single biggest reason for this is it’s lack of support for Web Sockets.
Lawrence Lindblom
July 12th, 2012 10:50 amLots of people here blame Microsoft for developing substandard browsers. Looking at IE6 at the time it was new, it was a good browser. Don’t blame MS for the lack of upgrades around the world and the +6% IE6 users still active. (Note: Just using IE6 as an example here).
There are many reasons for old browsers still being used. Lack of economy to buy newer better stuff, lack of knowledge to upgrade to better browsers, lack of interest in upgrading at all and of course, lack of corporate funds to upgrade not only the browser but possibly a load of old legacy software we built for them all those years ago that is a bit too much tuned to work on those old browsers.
Sure we all want to play around with the latest and greatest stuff, no matter what browser you personally favor. But in the end it all comes down to business decisions. I would focus on finding better arguments to push the client to upgrade the browsers. I recently had a large client motivated to skip the IE7 > IE8 upgrade and instead go to IE9… that discussion wasn’t even about alternative browsers. Why? Corporate standards. And why choose IE as corporate standard? Well, if you go all out with SQL Server, Dynamics, SharePoint and whatnot, then IE is a pretty obvious choice, no matter what level of annoyance it would bring to the developer community.
This can be interpreted as a MS-defence rant but I’m just trying to shed an ounce of light on the difficulties of not being able to “just upgrade your browser”. This does not apply only to MS/IE of course but they’re a pretty good example.
Jurij Burkanov
July 12th, 2012 11:18 amHey, it’s all clear from the corporative side: I was for a long time involved in building websites for large corps and government, so I know how many of them still on the WinXP + IE6 – JavaScript are and I won’t blame them. They’ve been trapped in this ecosystem by MS. But what this article is about – the author suggests, it’s not fair even to complain about crappy MS products, everyone’s got to look happy and accept IE as an inevitable natural disaster.
Martin
July 12th, 2012 10:57 amActually the problem isn’t in how well IE does or doesn’t support standards.
The problem is that IE updates happen slowly, and only when the user requests it. Whether or not you like this idea of forced updates, the practical upshot for web developers is having to support too many variants of browsers.
The fact that the IE team decided to not support IE9 on XP means that there are still going to be a lot of people using IE8 or below for a while to come.
All other browsers work on XP (albeit without hardware acceleration) but this is an acceptable tradeoff. At least you could make the website /look/ like it’s supposed to, even if it’s not hardware accelerated. If they had done this, I’d guess most people have been on IE9 a lot sooner (it would be justifiable for th IT dept), and the general feature capability of browsers would accelerate (most developers I know held off on using basic things like border-radius until IE8 market share dropped off to less than majority).
The fact that IE9 and 10 will follow in this same tradition of not encouraging updates more frequently means that in a few years time they will again be “old” browsers and developers will be again be slowed down because of the commercial need of websites to look more or less the same in all browsers.
As such I hope that IE usage drops down a toilet.
Jurij Burkanov
July 12th, 2012 10:59 amI’m building web-sites since 1995. For the part of my career after 2000, there was just one thing, that spoiled all the fun – the IE. I don’t give a ****, from what scratches they’ll be rebuilding their future versions. The MS IE team has constantly, over many years, proved to be unable to produce anything, that would answer the current needs of users and developers. It’s not a race for features, “like in other browsers”. It’s a total, constant lack of vision and will. The mixture of flawed trident engine and MS-style product management will always result in producing the hated IE. Think about why “all other” browsers were always welcomed through all those years, despite their own bugs, rendering problems and inconsistencies. Tolerating existence of IE “because it’s a part of our job” is like to tolerate lazy alcoholics in your company, “because they’re part of our crew”.
I will stop blaming Internet Explore when this project will be closed for good.
Mike
July 12th, 2012 1:43 pmbeing around since 1995 seems you forgot Netscape 4.7.x ;)
Of course IE did get no updates after that one (luckily) died as there was ONLY IE. If we go on like some people want (webkit only) we’ll get the same situation with Chrome. It will stuck at v30 or so as no competition would force anyone to add anything anymore
Luke
July 12th, 2012 11:01 amI do not think it is a case of blaming Internet Explorer, or if it is, I would suggest that it is blamed with good reason.
The points about Progressive Enhancement is well taken, but, I think that there must be limits applied. Adapting design and interaction using IE6 as the baseline, and then progressively enhancing it beyond that is more work than it needs to be. Doing so would be like having all modern instruction manuals to include Latin, Ancient Greek and Aramaic beside the modern languages of English, Spanish, French, etc.
The short and simple truth is that Microsoft waited too long, like most large companies do, to innovate and improve Internet Explorer whilst the rest of the browsers were advancing in leaps and bounds. Personally, I do not understand why Microsoft even bother investing time, money and effort staying in the browser race.
IE should follow suit of Netscape – realise that it was groundbreaking in the beginning, but really, with so many great alternatives out there, IE (even the more recent versions) is either now, or very shortly bound to be, obsolete.
Jon
July 12th, 2012 11:06 amThis sort of argument from developers is symptomatic of low skilled workforce. We all like to play with the shiny things, but you know what- life isn’t like that. And lets not pretend that ‘developers’ move the industry. Its the big players who push standards to where their software performs the best. I’m talking about Google & Safari here. Microsoft did the same back in the day. Isn’t anyone a little supposed that mobile safari didn’t do absolute positioning? Why do you think that is?I mean, the mobile market is really fragmented and that’s where the growth is. Why waste your time moaning about IE.
Everyone’s got an uncle nobody likes, but you still invite the tosser round at Christmas. Its not a big issue, really.
If you’re using cutting edge features some users will get hurt and your clients should just be made aware of that.
Adam W.
July 12th, 2012 6:14 pmWe’re not talking about cutting edge stuff … we’re talking about correctly implementing the spec
kayan
July 12th, 2012 11:28 pmI believe you are thinking on fixed positioning, which is not nearly as commonly used as absolute positioning (Maybe 1-2% percent of websites use fixed positioning?). And yes, I was miffed that it mobile safari didn’t do fixed positioning correctly. But they fixed it, and given iOS’s update pattern, I’m sure over 95% of mobile safari users have a version with this fixed. So it’s not an issue now, and it was only was only a small problem at the time.
Nico
July 12th, 2012 11:15 amI don’t forget the hours working for IE. I disagree.
george.n
July 12th, 2012 11:21 amWe need to remember something here and that we all come from different camps and serve different clients with varying budgets of which their (prospective) clients are at different levels in the economy. While you have users in one continent being the most up to date then you get another where users are far behind. Focus by country you get a different set of stats.
The problem is not only global but as well is concentrated by country. We can use stats to try to hone in our efforts on their browser preference (irregardless if IE-whatever is the majority) and try to stay compatible with standards in order to provide a wider exposure that are off target.
We can argue until we’re blue about supporting old browsers or not – they’re here and the numbers will show you what you need to support. Translate that to a cost to your client and let them decide. It should not effect your work efforts to serve your clients if their project requires you to support an old browser.
Maciek
July 12th, 2012 11:22 amUnfortunately this is not the first time that Louis Lazaris is writing an article that is wrong/not entirely correct. I’ve been following his blog (Impressive Webs) for some time and he quite often posts badly researched articles. I had to correct him a multiple times. Moreover they are based on his assumptions that sometimes are not correct.
I wouldn’t take anything he writes too seriously.
Mitzie
July 12th, 2012 11:31 amMy opinion is, that different browsers meet different needs and so on one hand we have web developers, on the other people who commonly use the browsers for infos, and on the third even, the businesses who want a good representative site with no flaws and with absolute functioning on every single browser (otherwise the site maybe would seem like nothing special at all).
“This attitude is completely counterproductive…” not the attitude maybe, but the IE itself is a little counterproductive. That does of course not mean, we should just ignore it because we all know in many companies it’s still the main browser to use and we should keep this in mind if we want to stay competitive.
“… they rebuilt the browser from scratch.” am..so what? :D it’s not always what you’ve done, but how good the USERS think it is. Remember, everything gets done for the people who will use our product, otherwise there’s no sense, even if we tried hard, unfortunately…
“No one is saying you can’t use RGBA. No one is holding a gun to your head and saying don’t use CSS animations. As an engineer on the Web application you get to make decisions every single day.” That’s logical, very good, and I completely agree, why go just critisizing when everybody can choose.
Definitely IE has made many progresses in last editions and quite fast too. I am just wondering if the other browsers have gone so much further in this time , that IE is still (and will always be?) behind them ?
Pritam @ Specky Geek
July 12th, 2012 11:44 amInternet Explorer, particularly the older version, is a big problem. Even, IE8 is poorly-equipped to handle the evolving web. For quite some time, I have been focusing on CSS3 and responsive layouts. IE8 doesn’t care about CSS3. The problem with IE is that it doesn’t auto-update. Browsers such as Firefox and Chrome do. This means any problem or deficiency in the browser gets eliminated automatically as soon as the user clicks on update button.
I believe the problem lies in Microsoft’s distribution model. Firefox and Chrome are free. IE requires you to have a genuine version of Windows to get the latest version. A lot of people still use Windows XP, often a pirated copy. (Please correct me if I am wrong. I downloaded IE ages ago. I don’t even use Windows.) If Microsoft can make IE independent of Windows or free for everyone (including those using its operating system without paying), the problem should be solved to a large extent.
Why should one dumb browser or its predecessors hold the web? Trust me, it is a problem. I recently created a responsive theme for a website and the client came back complaining about ‘issues’ of square edges ‘that belong to stone age’. Turned out his web browser was from the stone age—IE8. Once he checked out the site in Firefox, he was a happy client.
There is no reason why the Web should make do with IE’s limitations. If the browser can’t evolve and keep pace with the Internet, it will eventually die. I don’t bother about IE. Others can also stop caring about it. I am more concerned about 70-80-90% (whatever the figure is) of users who use modern browsers. If you can’t upgrade to the latest browsers, I cannot keep wasting my energy on providing you the best user experience.
Mike
July 12th, 2012 1:50 pmso you are basically denying your customers 10-30% (or even more!) of THEIR customers and THEIR money?
I don’t get your argument about supporting people with pirated OS, what should that be?!
And actually you do not have to provide the “best user experience”, just a decent or even just ok experience. But you seem not even to care for that.
NicoJuicy
July 12th, 2012 2:12 pmDepends if the customer is willing to pay the extra 10-20-30% effort it takes for supporting older browsers ;)
L.
July 12th, 2012 3:18 pmAre you mad ?
It’s EASILY 300% effort from a chrome-working website that’s ok in firefox, to an equivalent in IE 8.
Don’t forget, most of the CSS breaks, js behaves like shit, about 10 times slower, and some things are downright impossible.
If it was 30%, I think noone would mind that much… the reality is so much worse that it is indeed time for businesses to stop asking for IE support.
Bertie
July 12th, 2012 5:31 pmI really think that’s the point. Let the market fix it, but we developers/design companies must reflect this upon our offers. Higher development cost means higher product price. So next time a client comes to you, just present him the options:
- State-of-the art site, with all the nifties: X€. Fully functional, but with degraded visual support for IE.
- Same with full IE support: X€ + Y% (caveat: some effects cannot simply be achieved).
They’ll probably think twice…
L.
July 16th, 2012 10:18 am@Bertie:
every effect can be achieved, using flash ( be it full flash or only for the animation).
But indeed that will command a serious markup, mxml isn’t exactly for pussies, and the documentation is so lacking that experience has real value.
But seeing how the world has decided that flash must die, that doesn’t sound like such a good solution (quite unfortunate, because there’s nothing quite as powerful in the ajax world yet).
Micah
July 12th, 2012 11:56 amAs a writer you can paint an issue however you want with diction and heavily connotated words. You say complain when you could easily substitute criticism, because no one likes a complainer. But the fact is, as designers and developers we influence the web. Remember the days when some websites only worked in IE? Was it because IE was the best, most feature capable browser? No, because it was a huge portion of the market share. If you needed to do something advanced and groundbreaking and didn’t have the time to make it work across all browsers you would obviously go with IE no matter how terrible it was. Giving IE one more unfair advantage and perhaps prolonging it’s inevitable downfall. Now, thank goodness, there are many other legit choices for browsers, and IE has lost huge chunks of the markets share. The web is in a vastly better state. But how much did we hold it back by going to grwat lengths to support IE, much worse ONLY supporting IE? Time and time again I had to open up IE each time I would find broken websites because some developer chose to support that browser. I personally would never switch to it completely but I was still dependent on it for some web tasks. Many users are not gonna take the time to download a different browser much less put up with switching back every time they encounter a broken site. So maybe we had no control over that. Maybe we have no control now. But I would assert we have a far greater influence then you acknowledge. This is a well written quality article, but I have to disagree with your conclusion. And just like you can bash and complain the other article for complaining, we can continue to complain about IE, cause frankly it sucks.
Martin Thorpe
July 12th, 2012 12:30 pmYeah nice article. Bashing articles are a waste of time and resources. I remember screaming at Netscape (Mozilla – FF) 2 because IE 3 was faster and smooter. In the days of IE 5.5 we were annoyed with Nestcape (I think it was 4 or 6 they never released 5) having to use layers as opposed to divs when doing anything advanced. Where is Netscape now, superceeded by FF was that a build from scratch to win back the market share?
Anyway part of web development in my eyes has always involved catering for different browsers for functionality now there is also the element of mobile devices for layout and screen res.
Great article thanks for standing up.
M-D
July 12th, 2012 12:53 pmOne point that seems to be missing from the argument is this. The more sites that support old IE the less people will switch to a better browser.
It’s important to remember that users switching to more capable browsers doesn’t just benefit web developers it also benefits the users that switch.
Whether you support old IE / new IE / or any other less capable browsers should be assessed on a case by case basis by looking at your usage metrics and factoring in the extra time/cost it takes to develop for those monsters. But its a fact that less support for poor browsers will push the web forward.
Keith
July 12th, 2012 2:43 pmNo, your site working in IE8, but not IE6 doesn’t cause someone to look for a solution by upgrading their browser to use your site. they close your tab (or window) and look for a site that “just works.”
As an Opera user, I’m constantly berated that I need to “upgrade to a modern browser” or use a “safer and more secure browser” and it’s incredibly off-putting. When I see a site that tells me to use a different browser, I take offense, as if I have poor judgment.
If I’m an industry professional and feel that way, how do you think an average user reacts to that?
L.
July 12th, 2012 3:21 pmNo average joe is going to use Opera, because it’s a niche browser that almost noone uses – and if you’re really a tech guy, you have at least three browsers on-hand.
R.
July 12th, 2012 5:21 pmWell, that’s a sad sentiment. It kind of suggests political correctness and conforming to the lowest common denominator so that nobody gets their feelings hurt.
People need to be educated about these issues involving standards and development effort, and one sure way they might get the message about inferior browsers is if they visit enough sites that suggest their browser isn’t up to scratch. I am sorry if someone feels they are being accused of poor judgement as a result.
But, usually, there is no choice made FOR Internet Explorer — it is the default browser; and often the user doesn’t KNOW there is a choice. Many think that “IE is the internet”, or that you find a webpage by typing a company name in the Google box and getting lucky, rather than by determining a URL (whatever that is).
However, many people can understand the concept of there being widespread, common “standard” products (in the sense that everyone commonly uses them) that do not at the same time adhere to certain industry standards or ideals. There are numerous examples of this in everyday life. If you automatically equate the “common” or the “default” as the “good” or the “best”, then you better get out and go around the block a few times.
Furthermore, just because a consumer has bought into one product (say Windows), I think they would or should understand that this company may not be the best at everything it does nor offer the best of everything. This is no more than recognizing how the world works. And just because I buy Kraft or Nescafe products doesn’t mean that I have to use their cookbook and only use their products in any recipe that I make.
A person that lives on Kraft singles or Macaroni and Cheese out of a box should not necessarily be made to feel like he is using poor judgement for the way he feeds his family (though that is debatable). But, certainly, it can be pointed out that what he thought was “cheese” is more than a little lacking. He may NEED education. Fortunately, he only has to open his eyes in just about any local supermarket these days to see the fresh produce and notice at least 6 kinds of blue cheese, 4 kinds of Swiss, 10 soft cheeses, etc.
An IE user isn’t so lucky. For us to pretend as though IE users are as familiar with the internet and issues of standards as they should be is to do them a disservice. And for us to use their imagined embarrassment or indignation as an excuse is to rationalize a real dumbing down of the internet that will indeed continue to perpetuate the issues and hold back its development.
M-D
July 12th, 2012 6:33 pmI agree that most users wil go to another site rather than switching browser if they come across a “we don’t support browser x” message.
The point I was trying to make is It’s not necessarily a good or a bad thing for your business to support any less capable browsers (like I said this will depend on a cost benefit analysis). But it’s defiantly true that if less and less sites support older browsers more and more users will make an effort to switch to more capable browsers. This is better for the user concerned and better for the web as a whole.
As also mentioned many users will not know why their browser should be upgraded. If they start seeing lots of websites saying IE7 isn’t supported that might give them a nudge towards an upgrade.
L.
July 16th, 2012 10:25 amBelieve me, if even 20% of the websites pushed for a “get chrome now”, every single user would switch away from IE.
What you say about people leaving the website only holds true when you’re the only activist in the sea. If many people shout “change browser”, anyone will change browser just to hear them shut up.
Besides, we’re talking about the tech ignorants here, makes sense to push them hard in a direction or another since there’s no way they’ll move by themselves.
Pankaj Thakur
July 12th, 2012 1:03 pmI don’t know much but IE6 (or let say IE) opened new jobs for web designers :)
Árni St. S.
July 12th, 2012 1:15 pmIE 9, slightly less shitty than it’s predecessors.
Ye, I’m totally sold.
Florian
July 12th, 2012 1:34 pmYour counter-article is utter rubbish. “IE is not holding us back, stop pointing fingers, boohoo”. Are you nuts? Some kind of special insane?
Try doing WebGL in IE. DOES. NOT. WORK. AT. ALL. Yeah, nice going there, “not holding us back” bullshit my arse. I want to see you work around that inconvenient fact that without WebGL you simply cannot do any usable interactive 3D graphics on the web, like, at all. Not holding us back eh? idiot.
bro
July 12th, 2012 1:38 pmbro, Please place more emphasis on the sentence below, for those who deduct the main purpose of your article.
6% or .6% cannot drag back the whole web.
Dan Moffat
July 12th, 2012 1:42 pmI will have to respectfully disagree with this article.
Just because I’m getting raped every day doesn’t mean that I have to start enjoying it, and Microsoft’s work on IE9/10 only adds a little lubrication to the situation.
Adam Nemeth
July 12th, 2012 1:44 pmThere is no such thing as “best possible experience”.
There is one best experience. Everything else is inferior experience.
Originally, this debate was about “speed vs visuals”: do we give the same visuals but an inferior speed, or the same speed with inferior visuals as “possible best”?
The web is not a content delivery platform anymore, it’s an application platform.
Therefore, the decision today is not about speed vs visuals, it’s about features: features vs speed, features vs browser (and therefore: user) coverage, and therefore, (feature * user coverage) vs time to market.
And there, there is no easy answer, there it can’t be the answer to forget rounded corners in IE, just make sure you deliver the content: it’s not content anymore.
I don’t think we should have this positive connotation with “best possible experience”. I don’t think that a positive word, like “best” should appear in this sentence.
Because then, as a community, we cannot act to actually solve the problem: in order to win a war, first, you have to announce your enemy.
NicoJuicy
July 12th, 2012 2:09 pmYes, IE 9 is a lot better, but it should get more features (in comparison to Chrome, Firefox and Opera). And the main thing is, that IE is costing me money, i don’t like that.
I hate IE 9 less then 6-8, but still, it’s costing me money. I care about progressive (not on small budget sites though), but you are forgetting that explaining these problems to a client, it ain’t easy for them to understand that there is a problem because of an old browser usage (again: small budget).
So, in short, IE mostly gives me extra nagging and loses me money => i don’t like IE that much.
Mario Raudsepp
July 12th, 2012 2:36 pmWell, I have to disagree, at least partially. Because blaming makes progress and IE6 is a good example. That’s a fact! You have to admit that without whining and blaming we wouldn’t be in such a great progress where we need to make only few minor fixes! It’s good to see, that IE dev team finally, is at least trying to care about us. We can see the light in the end of the tunnel! So there are sign’s for better webfuture, when blaming stick’s around :)
Justin
July 12th, 2012 2:45 pmi surely hope they started from scratch with their development team as well.
I truly hate writing exceptions for IE6-8 (like mime type pjpeg). Let alone those CSS Bugs from hell.
When those tabblets nerds are finally released from the MS Bunker they need to put those IE6-8 programmers inside and throw away the key.. grrrrr.. this makes up for all those extra hours and money we programmers spent those last 10 years.
“Hee, look we finally did it, We finally managed to stick to standards in IE9. So stop booooo-ing!”
Well done.. really.. well done.. took you 6 years. You can’t really expect i switch over and undo my 6 years of hate.
Jaap Rood
July 12th, 2012 2:57 pmIt’s good to see another perspective on the story, and there is something to be said about having to be pragmatic, realistic and to not put all your energy in complaining but instead trying to make the situation as good as you can. However, one piece of the article really put me off.
“The truth is that every job has some part of it that sucks. Even at my favorite job, as front end lead on the Yahoo homepage, there were still parts of my job that sucked.”
If there is one thing I like about my job, then it’s that the web community is one that doesn’t accept this. That doesn’t accept the status quo and will constantly challenge everything from how they work to the work they actually produce. So somebody saying “it’s the way it is, you just have to accept it” seems extremely out of place. If there is one industry with the possibility to change and try something new, and when you hit a barrier, to start over again, it’s the web.
I think it’s great we’re trying to push technology, and making sure we have to put less time in cross browser support so we have more time to focus on innovating is part of that. In the mean time, every serious app that gets launched still supports the older browsers. Facilitate for today, but keep pushing for a better world. And if you ever stop asking yourself why: stop. And ask yourself why.
JeffK
July 12th, 2012 3:09 pmI refuse to accept that usage of IE is something out of our control and we should just “learn to accept it”. IE has caused billions in costs to businesses because of its failures and it’s development is never consistant.
At some point you have to decide to educate others on why it might not be good for you development to play with the crazy big kid in the corner of gym who constantly makes up his own rules.
Steve Jones
July 12th, 2012 3:11 pmNicholas;
Right on the money. I’m afraid it’s a generational thing. Many younger developers – by no means all, maybe only a small minority – just want to have fun. They want to do cool stuff. What they don’t want to do is the hard work required to satisfy their employer/clients’ real-world requirements.
Any motivated college student who’s had an introductory class can produce a great-looking site targeted at a single browser and a single “standard”. People who expect to get paid should resign themselves to building sites that work for the vast majority of each site’s intended audience.
Is the owner going to change the site’s target audience to suit the developer? No. Is the site’s target audience going to change browsers to suit the developer? No. The only thing left to change is the developer. As you suggest, the best change the developer can make is to recognize the challenge presented by multiple browsers and take pride in working hard and meeting the challenge well – including all the bells and whistles HTML5, CSS3, and all the rest have to offer.
Steve
July 12th, 2012 3:17 pmWe are forgetting that it is a very big, often nasty, highly profitable corporate world out there. By design.
It is clear that MS do not want to solve the problems created very quickly. Despite obvious difficulties of scale that any solution would have to tackle, they do have the ability, the power, and the money to do so.
By 2022 there will be a very complete dossier detailing the history and totalling global economic costs of standardising one aspect of the internet. The $ cost will be enormous and will act as a lobbying argument against the benefits of embracing standards in other, more lucrative, parts of the industry. You have concrete figures of what it will have cost to cause MS to change it’s path, and therefore an indication of how much it will cost to encourage them to change path again. MS have a clear interest in building that figure up as high as they can.
So if, as a designer at work, you have the uncomfortable feeling that you are being pointlessly shafted over a barrel by a fat, sweaty pig of a browser, you couldn’t be further from the truth – There is a very deliberate point to it.
Ron Calbick
July 12th, 2012 3:26 pmI agree, every job in the world has those aspects that you simply don’t look forward to. When it comes to web development, more often than not this means ensuring your work addresses issues specific to IE. Most web developers have come to accept this fact (those that choose to deal with IE anyway…I’ve met some who completely ignore IE altogether) – we fix what we can, accept the fact that it needs to be done to meet the needs of a large group of users, we gripe and whine about it, and move on to the next project.
With that being said, I definitely agree that IE9 is a leap forward over past versions, although it does still lack support for many features supported by the other major browsers, but by and large that lack of support is purely aesthetic, there are sometimes workarounds, and progressive enhancement is almost always a viable alternative. Personally, I’m just thankful it does offer at least some of that support and I have fewer issues to address when testing in IE9 over older versions. It also means IE continues to move forward, meaning that hopefully the need to support IE6 and IE7 will become less of a necessity as users slowly migrate to the newer version.
I see both sides of the fence here really. On one hand, I’m glad Microsoft is making an effort to bring their browser up to the current “standard”, on par with the other major browsers. Do I feel they could have done more? Yes. Am I part of their development team and do I fully understand the hurdles that team had to overcome to get IE9 to market within a time frame that keeps it competitive? No. So I can complain all I want, but I don’t understand the difficulties the developers had to overcome in the first place, and I know I run into my own problems doing development work, so it would be rather hypocritical of me to chastise Microsoft for their efforts.
On the other hand, I’m sometimes thankful for some of the issues I run into in IE simple because those issues prove to be valuable learning experiences that teach more about my chosen career and more about the fine details related to the development work I’m doing. They can be frustrating yes, and when I have to spend valuable time tracking down the solution to an issue it further compounds my frustration, but when all is said and done, I get a nice feeling of accomplishment for overcoming the obstacle and having learned something along the way.
Adam
July 12th, 2012 3:31 pmSure is easier to complain than to take action. I really appreciate the view point you’ve provided. Although I am no developer, I’ve often heard the grumblings about IE throughout our office.
Perhaps, IE has undeserved disdain; or perhaps it is just a good ole inside joke amongst developers that IE will cause headache. And in some masochistic way they actually enjoy fixing the errors caused by the outdated browser?
Overall, I agree wholeheartedly with your point that “They might not necessarily work exactly the same in them all, but they should still be able to work.” Accessibility to the web is key for any great benefits deriving from our work.
Reinier Kaper
July 12th, 2012 3:33 pmI agree for the most part with this article, still I think there are two sides to this.
Fact is, there’s a whole bunch of browsers that can do a wide array of things and there’s also a wide range of browsers that are very limited in what they can do.
Educating your clients about this fact is probably the most important thing. Web design and development is not like print. A design SHOULD not look the same in every browser, although most clients THINK it should. Making them aware of this helps a lot in my experience.
Furthermore, ever since I’ve started using HTML5 boilerplate for my projects and modified it to my needs (like I added a lt-ie10 class), I can very successfully build websites that function correctly in all browsers and might look and behave slightly nicer in newer browsers.
If you build something in a website that is crucial to the user, but you only focus on ‘new’ techniques, than your approach to web development is wrong. This even goes for using proper mark-up and css classes.
In my opinion, people that ‘blame’ old browsers just have the wrong approach.
I think we all agree that there are enough bugs in older browsers that in fact ARE annoying, but I rarely come across stuff I can’t tackle with just a separate class for that browser.
Graham
July 12th, 2012 3:40 pmIt’s time to stop Internet Explorer you say?
James
July 12th, 2012 3:43 pmI’m a little surprised to hear so many of you refer to the cost to upgrade a browser? What cost?
It’s a fact that IE 7/8 are more difficult to be compliant with because they’re not compliant.
D. Lambert
July 12th, 2012 3:43 pmI agree completely that it’s counter-productive to blame IE exclusively for all the UI woes of our industry. Rather than hang just one browser vendor out to dry, though, I think it might be more relevant to look at the underlying issue surrounding all of these browsers: fragmentation.
No matter which browsers lead, and which browsers follow, we’re living in a world with a confounding variety of browsers, form factors, and interface capabilities, and this problem is growing in scope — not shrinking. I remember a time when a software developer could set up a half-dozen or so machine configurations and have a reasonable assurance that he was able to test UI performance for setups corresponding to 90% or more of the traffic he’d see. That’s long gone. Given the proliferation of platforms and devices we see today, standards support has become more important than ever — it’s our only hope for accomplishing representative development and testing across these clients.
I’d argue that despite all this fragmentation, we’re seeing better standards compliance than ever before across browsers. The fact that pain continues is a result of continued standards evolution, as well as browser manufacturers’ attempts both to keep up and to differentiate themselves. There’s simply no way to ensure that every client is the same — especially while the standards continue to evolve.
If our industry wants to do something to improve developer productivity and users’ experiences, we need to find better ways to abstract the mapping of UI capabilities to browser / platform capabilities. I don’t ever want to think about IE vs. Firefox vs. Chrome vs. iWhatever vs. mobile vs. “I’m running on a *what*??” again, and I’d love to see more mature tooling to support this.
Matthieu Dufour
July 12th, 2012 3:44 pm“If it’s our job to support those browsers then that’s just part of our job.”
Ah, the classic ‘my job’s my job, I am such a hero..’, I am a professional so I won’t question the tools I am given, I am just gonna get things done no matter how much of a pain it is.
From a professional point of view : yes. You’re being paid to accomplish something and IE doesn’t really concern your client. I agree.
But plainly ignoring a company poor’s practices that make dev’s job a living hell ain’t the answer.
Yes IE9 is getting close to ‘decent’, and yes MS is doing efforts, but it just isn’t enough.
If IE9 was the ultimate browser, I am pretty sure people would nostalgically laugh back at IE6, and MS would be forgiven by now. Unfortunately it’s not the case.
Until then, haters gonna hate, why would they not? Don’t you think it’s legitimate?
The only reason IE isn’t out of the picture by now is MS dominant position in other areas, they keep trying to catch up with the rest, but they do it badly and too late, thus wasting dev’s time.
They don’t work on a new browser for a better web (their software haven’t been helping for the past decade why would it now?), they just need to make money out of it, and they will because their browser is installed on so many machines by default.
It is our job to get things to work no matter the constraints, that’s what people pay us for, I agree.
But it doesn’t mean to have to accept it.
Just a very quick (dumb) example :
your job is to harvest honey from a bee’s nest. it’s your job you’re goo at it.
now your client want you to do your job naked, because of their new policy.
you go ahead and proceed naked, get stung a couples ouf times, the job’s done and the client’s happy with your work.
You’ve been professional, but aren’t you gonna complain about the work conditions?
MS has been doing the same to devs for years, except that they ask you to put honey on your nipples before starting the job.
Anyways, thanks for sharing a different opinion through this article at least.
Captain Betty
July 12th, 2012 3:44 pmThank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great article. Needed to be said.
Flo
July 12th, 2012 3:47 pmI can’t help myself, but i hate IE and i hate browsing the web with IE. Starts and ends with testing pages in dev-state. I have seven websites online using this KILL IE Plugin and hope more and more customers start using this with me.
Sorry Microsoft, with IE9 and IE10 you may have made huge progress and IE today is probably not as bad as it was months and years ago, but thing is: there are so much better alternatives out there that makes surfing and using the web so much more fun.
Moriz
July 12th, 2012 3:48 pmMeasuring a browsers’ quality should be easy in terms of standards implementation and compliance. The standars exist apart from browsers and the quantity and quality of their implementation can be more or less objectively measured.
I think it’s in this aspect where IE has always fallen short. In this sense, providing compatibility and proper display in major IE versions is not a choice, and I agree with the author in that.
Promoting IE use is a different matter, it’s standars implementations is laggy in terms of quantity and quality and it’s extra features are not comparable to the ones of other browsers. Security is an issue too.
And I’d like to add one extra point in this: platforms. IE is the only major browser that runs only in one platform, all other major browsers run in all major platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, mobile), the user can have a more unified experience and the developer won’t find unpleasant surprises.
Brandon
July 12th, 2012 4:02 pmI agree with this article in a lot of ways in that sometimes we complain too much about IE and use it as a crutch, but I still feel that all that complaining we did about IE6, IE7, etc. helped MS to decide to make IE9 “completely from scratch.”
So, maybe our complaints has helped to persuade MS to pay more attention to the development of their browsers. If we don’t raise any complaints, then MS will just sit back with what they have and rake in the money.
David
July 12th, 2012 4:04 pmIf you don’t care enough about my website to visit it with a modern browser, I don’t care enough about your experience at my website. Conceding to Ballmer and his cronies now gives them zero incentive to make this train wreck of a company any better. Bring Back Bill.
Tiago Donatti
July 12th, 2012 4:54 pmI’m really impressed how this subject motivated so much discussion.
I understand the point of view where complaining about web design work difficulties and how Internet Explorer is bad not makes thinks better… (but what else we can do?)
But please don’t insult my intelligence saying there something good in IE (all versions!).
I’m a BIG fun of Microsoft, I really think Windows 7, Office2010 and Xbox 360 are great products, very well finished and works perfect for me in everyday basis.
But the browser is really bad and it is truly holding back the web. All professionals who work with web apps know how difficult is to support browsers like IE7 and IE8 (IE6 is totally out of the line). IE9 really is a great step forward but still far behind FireFox and Chrome. For me, the main reason is the nonexistent auto-update.
The clearest signal that things got wrong for IE is the huge loss in market share. The only person who still uses IE is someone that doesn’t know how to install a different web browser. That’s the hard true.
For me IE team really need to rethink their auto-update strategy.
Jeff Edsell
July 12th, 2012 5:04 pm“As an engineer on the Web application you get to make decisions every single day.”
That’s the point. 99% of the time, I don’t.
When I do freelance I have a much more direct connection to the client, and I can explain things like progressive enhancement. But in pretty much every day job I’ve had for the last ten years, I’m saddled with clients who open an IE6 window next to a Chrome 20 window and look between the two to make sure they match. And complain about being cheated if the pages aren’t exactly the same, pixel-for-pixel and function-for-function.
And then I have to deal with Project Managers and Account Representatives with various levels of understanding of what I do. I explain carefully and rationally what the best practices are, only to be told “Just do what they want. Keep the client happy. That’s all that matters.”
We have to try to move things forward, because we are the only ones who understand it. It’s not whining about doing extra work. Modern browsers make everything better for everyone, not just us. The more time spent focused on backwards compatibility, the less that’s available to do the best job we can.
Kurt
July 12th, 2012 5:07 pmA good defense of IE. However, nobody is asking Microsoft to do anything other than to catch up and stay current. That’s what the other browsers do. It’s not asking that much.
Matt Vaughan
July 12th, 2012 5:10 pmNicholas, I still can’t agree with you. Microsoft is still making the same mistakes. IE8 will indeed become the next IE6, because users of XP (of which there are still a lot because it’s as good an OS as any out there, and works well on limited hardware) CANNOT upgrade to IE9 (just as Win2k users could not upgrade to IE7). Similarly, users of Vista or early versions of Windows 7 CANNOT upgrade to IE10. MS has got itself (AND US!) into this mess, and continues to be in this mess, by being arrogant, tying the browser too much to the OS, and for other stupid (often marketing-related) reasons of their own making. I don’t see them doing anything much better right now, other than taking half-steps to close the feature/standards gap with other browsers and nudge towards more frequent updates.
Even where a user’s OS supports a newer version, MS are only rolling out forced upgrades slowly and in a limited way, only a small proportion of users will actually get the automatic upgrades (only if they have the most liberal “automatic update” policy in Windows Update, which experienced Windows users have learned NOT to have enabled under any circumstances…), and the automatic upgrades that have occurred so far haven’t had any discernable effect on the versions in use. Since they only add new features every year or two, they will spend the rest of that time being largely obsolete, then the next year or two continuing to be obsolete as users slowly migrate to the new version.
We’re entering a world where there are huge advantages to shifting from “anything other than text is a background image” to “use CSS3 effects for everything possible”, and the browser that is holding us back from doing so successfully is… IE8, of which there will be many users for the next couple of years at least.
I also don’t think people were complaining much when IE6 had 90% market share, they just designed websites for IE and that’s how websites were built and there weren’t many alternatives. It’s when it continued to hold onto 20-50% market share despite being 8 years old, and with multiple better alternatives available, that developers really began complaining.
And now, IE versions below 9 ARE holding back the web (and even 9 will be somewhat in the next couple of years): it’s not just about enjoying our jobs, it’s about being able to deliver incredible experiences on budgets clients can afford! (And that are easily maintainable going forward.) IE6-8 (and 9 a little) prevents us from being able to do that.
AGP
July 12th, 2012 5:22 pmIt was refreshing to read something so completely different regarding the Internet Explorer.
However, I really, really, “love to hate” the IE, especially 7 and sometimes 8. It’s nothing about Microsoft, so there’s no “bashing for the sake of bashing” involved.
I just see this particular browser as a hindrance to proper webdesign. I’m not actually coding myself (lucky me), but I so hate to re-check any of the more modern design elements with the programmers – we all hate to have that “Can IE do that? Which version?” conversation.
And, sorry to say that, but statements like “It is from within constraints that creativity is born.” are rubbish and kind of, like Daniel said, look like Stockholm Syndrome towards older IE versions. Constraints like older browsers without proper support *kill* creativity, they hold you back because you have to keep in mind that there are browsers out there that are incapable of displaying your site correctly.
My opinion is that we, as designers and programmers, should labor towards raising awareness for up-to-date browsers, in any way possible.
Whether it’s by refusing to support certain browsers altogether (very unwise, I think) or gently (or sometimes even not-so-gently) nudging the visitors (like Kogan.com does with the “IE7 tax”, or maybe some gentle hints about what the site would look like on a current browser), is up to the individual.
I, for my part, simply design with modern browsers in mind. After the whole programming is done, I create a IE-only stylesheet and basically “dumb down” the whole design until a compromise of “design” and “hey, it works” is reached. A lot of work – unnecessary work – for sure, but at the moment I can’t afford to cater exclusively to modern browsers. Believe me, if I could ignore the problems that IE7 and 8 throw my way, I would.
Peter Kincses
July 12th, 2012 5:26 pmI am lucky as in working as an in-house front end developer and having a great influence over the direction the company takes regarding graceful degradation. Basically I always look at what the benefits of certain features or developments working in an identical way in every browser would have on sales on the site, which is what basically pays my salary. Accessibility for me is always the number one target. If css3/html5 design elements or certain Jquery functions do not work in IE(IE9 documents mode seems to cause a lot of problems lately) then I don’t panic. I look at Google Analytics’ breakdown on the site’s audience and make a decision based on the data. If the added time and effort required do not justify the expected revenue then I have actual data to use to explain this to the business owners.
I feel for guys working for agency’s though, as it’s very difficult to explain to certain clients the intricacies of cross-browser compatibility and the additional costs of development.
However, as others also said before, this is part of the job and just do the best you can based on the time frame available. Do not let IE’s on any other browsers’ lack of support for new elements stop you from exploring and enjoying the evolving nature of the web.
Mark DiSciullo
July 12th, 2012 5:32 pmAh…as UX designers we need to pull our heads out of our @sses and realize that to our “users” (you know…the people that we are actually designing for) upgrading a browser is not always their most important task to accomplish in life. These are know constrains, although frustrating, this is what our clients pay us to solve for.
“Poor pittyful me…I have to design for a site that works in IE6.”
I design for “users” who are at times trying to complete tasks in life like research cancer, find a job, or manage their finances…asking them to upgrade their browser seems a bit pompus to me.
Adam W.
July 12th, 2012 6:07 pmUpgrading to modern browsers makes the Web better for everyone, including the users you mention. There is nothing wrong with trying to educate them. After all, that’s what you’re trying to do with the content of the site in the first place.
Zach
July 12th, 2012 5:41 pmFirst, let me applaud Smashing for having both sides of the argument present.
Second, let me say the article here is very well written.
Third, lets get a bit more history here. Microsoft did what we are applauding Chrome and Firefox for now, they just did it back in the days of Netscape vs. IE. The problem came that Microsoft made a bunch of experimental features, that developers loved to use. Then the W3C decided they wanted to implement those features differently than MS, so MS was left with a hard choice. Do you support the already developed apps, or do you go the way of standards?
They went the way of already developed web apps, and thus IE6 was born. So after how much they were lamented, it seems they have taken a sit back and let the other guys battle it out approach. Once they are done battling it out, and a unified approach is figured out, MS can come and adopt that in it’s browser. And then we can’t whine about their non-standard approach…
What will all the haters do then?
Paul
July 12th, 2012 5:46 pmI really need to smoke one after reading all this… =)
Adam W.
July 12th, 2012 6:05 pmFacts are facts … and fact is, IE’s rendering engine is simply wrong, not according to spec, and buggy. IE9 was an improvement, but it’s amazing that after all the grief MS took, and all the promises it made, it still managed to not get it quite right in IE9. And I say this as someone who is not, in general, a Microsoft hater.
So it’s ridiculous to say people should just get used to working with different browsers. I shouldn’t have to get used to a browser that is specifically incorrect about the spec, and whose life cycle is painfully slow.
You code to the standards – and it simply works 99.99999 percent of the time in Firefox/Chrome/etc.. … Then in IE, it’s broken. I’m not talking about pixel-perfection – I’m saying it’s broken, as per the spec. Rendered wrong. Not different. WRONG.
Meanwhile, CSS3 offers the ability to stop using images for rounded corners and gradient backgrounds – which is HUGE – and IE simply has just not implemented it yet. Like I said, its life cycle is pathetically slow and long.
Kenneth King
July 12th, 2012 6:06 pmUltimately I feel that if our clients want the exact same experience in IE7-8 that they do in IE 9, FF, Safari, and Chrome it’s going to cost them.
I love Smashingmagazine.com flexible design however, I can guarantee that the IE 7-8 version would not fly with most marketing folks. It’s tool minimal and they’re not going to understand nor care why this is. Their just going to wonder why it doesn’t look as cool in their browser when comparing it to others.
For me the pervious articles were more educational and something to thing about.
As a designer I’m a huge fan of IE 9 and I can wait for it to gain the majority of the IE market share
Amit
July 12th, 2012 6:12 pmSo IE6 should be supported because it was awesome 10 years ago? Well, stone age was awesome 7000 years ago; go live a life like that. Stop arguing over shit that should have ended ages ago. Its time that IE 6, 7 and 8 die off. They are freaking stone age software.
Even microsoft does not support its old platforms. They killed continuing support for windows 98, and will even stop supporting windows mobile 7, past windows mobile 8 release. When MS does not support its own software after 2 years why the hell are we forced to support shit that should literally die off?
Jason Farrell
July 12th, 2012 6:13 pmThe hilarious thing here is that this article is basically preaching maturity and a professional attitude when evaluating products. You read these comments and I, for one, am scared of the future of this industry. The utter zealotry and immaturity in some of these comments should make people very ashamed to call themselves professionals
Bryon Evans
July 12th, 2012 6:35 pmOk, IE9 is fine but Opera 12 (and most likely 13, 14 and beyond) on XP but not IE9? It’s the same old mentality from Ballmer. It’s the “hard sale” approach. They are using the browser as a marketing tool, a crowbar, a blunt force billy club for OS sales and no matter how well IE9 works on Vista/7/8/etc there will continue to be resentment because of that. Until IE9 is obviously BETTER than FF or Opera they will not stop losing user numbers. That’s just how it is. And if they don’t watch themselves closely IE on any mobile system will be a thing of the past. Have you tried Opera mini? LOL. When the days of Ballmer come to an end THEN I might not get a sick feeling about using IE*.
Seth Miller
July 12th, 2012 6:42 pmYou lost me at front end lead at Yahoo!. Yahoo! develops a lot of great technology, they just seemingly forget to apply that to their websites. Yahoo! has been the poster-child for cluttered design since I’ve gotten into the business.
TL Morales
July 12th, 2012 6:51 pmI am a Chrome user (with a soft spot in my heart for Opera) and would like everyone to upgrade but like Tiago Coelho [see comments] I had to build intranet applications that were largely based on the IE browser available at that time. When companies invest time and money into development, they rarely are willing to let that go. That coupled with the fact that most large employers lock down there computers for “security” people don’t have the option to upgrade or even install alternative browsers.
The issue is not going away. IE will always have a legacy browser and those browsers are bound to have something missing that you want to develop with. There have been countless articles discussing taming older browsers and numerous js tool kits developed to provide a more consistent presentation across browsers. My suggestion, design it for today’s browsers but develop it for the yesterday’s.
Jim Rogers
July 12th, 2012 7:11 pm“We should just accept things and deal with it”.. haha..hell no. I agree that ie 9 is decent but its the responsibility of every web developer to continue to be very vocal about where microsoft (or any other company that wants to get in the browser game) is going wrong..
I do have high hopes for windows 8 upgrade for only $40 knocking a big dent out of all the old ie versions usage share, though. Maybe im too optimistic?? Though I do dream haha.
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/07/02/upgrade-to-windows-8-pro-for-39-99.aspx
deborah
July 12th, 2012 7:23 pmI am glad to see this article. I’m guilty of whining sometimes, but my most satisfying work is 100% cross-browser. I don’t agree that it has to look identical down to the pixel. The whole meaning of flexible design, a concept that I love, is that it adapts – is flexible! The web is continuing to evolve at a very quick, exciting pace. Because of this, old browsers will always be with us. Meanwhile, I think that Louis’s example of rainforest deforestation, while it illustrates his point, is my idea of very lazy and somewhat poor implementation – it isn’t THAT hard to make it work for older browsers too. Thank you Nicholas for a great article!
Louis Lazaris
July 12th, 2012 7:29 pmWell, this is quite a heated discussion here. Unfortunately, even Nicholas’s article has largely misrepresented the point of the “old browsers” article. Nowhere in that article did I say not to use Progressive Enhancement. Nowhere in that article did I say not to support old browsers.
The point of the article is this:
If IE8 and IE9 users are not auto-updated, and those browsers have a significant market share for years to come, then the Web is being held back. That’s not a point that is under debate. That’s a fact.
Of course we’re going to use Progressive Enhancement to combat that obstacle. That’s our only tool available for this, and I wholeheartedly support it! But creating awareness of the limitations of IE8 and IE9 is not a bad thing if it leads to those browsers being pushed out of common use. That would be a good thing. Unfortunately, Nicholas seems to imply that supporting IE8 is a good thing, almost as if he prefers to support it.
But again, nowhere in the article am I discouraging support for old browsers. The whole point of the article is that we *have* to support browsers that have a large market share (meaning IE8 and IE9). So I really don’t understand how anyone could get from that article a message that I was encouraging people to stop supporting old browsers, or not to use Progressive Enhancement.
If Microsoft does something to get XP and Win7 users gone and/or upgraded to IE10, then I’m all for it, and we can move on from this debate. But MS’s track record on these things has been traditionally very poor, so we’ll have to wait and see.
In the meantime: Get as many people as you can off IE8 and IE9, and this will help move the web forward, and (as Paul Irish nicely put it), the Web Platform will win.
geddesign
July 12th, 2012 7:31 pmGotta say I disagree. For as long as I’ve engineered on the web platform IE has been a constant frustration and roadblock. I honestly don’t know how you can call IE9 a “damn good browser”, with only 47% support of modern web standards. To give you some perspective Firefox 3.6 (end of 2009) had 53% support. Upcoming IE10 is a big improvement, scoring 77%. It’s already behind and its not even out yet, but it’s still some great progress. Progress that I can’t applaud because I’ll be stuck supporting that version of IE for a decade. Source: http://caniuse.com
If Microsoft would ship a single, self-updating product (like FF/Chrome) then I would cheer at every improvement/effort they make. But instead, they greedily dangle their new browser like a carrot to entice people to upgrade Windows OS. So like Paul Irish pointed out (http://paulirish.com/2011/browser-market-pollution-iex-is-the-new-ie6/) we’re going to be stuck with every half-baked browser MS releases for a very long time. I wrote an article about Microsoft’s golden opportunity to turn things around with IE 10: http://geddesign.com/post/10775181893/microsofts-golden-ticket-ie10
Adding insult to injury, MS markets IE* as the best browser on the market. Apparently some suckers believe it.
I’m all about having a positive attitude and focusing on the things that can be changed, that’s your message. But you’re wrong that we’re powerless to change the IE problem. Thanks to Google’s Chrome Frame, I get to develop internal apps at work, using the full potential of modern web standards without a single thought for IE. It’s hard to describe the exciting and fulfilling practice of modern web dev. Once you’ve tasted of that, it’s hard to imagine going back to building for a browser that can’t even do gradients or web sockets.
Microsoft has a big opportunity to change things with IE10, I sincerely hope they do. Until then not only will I keep blaming IE, I’ll keep doing something about it.
Jack Nycz
July 12th, 2012 7:49 pmExactly what I was getting at – IE10 (yet to be released) is already behind the other browsers.