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.
Jack Nycz
July 12th, 2012 7:47 pmNo. Internet Explorer has consistently released programs that are years behind their competitors products. This argument is similar to saying “don’t blame Pontiac for releasing cars years behind their competitors. It’s just something you should deal with.” But you see, in a situation where the end user always has a choice Pontiac was disbanded – as I believe would be the same for IE except for the corporate world where it is still the reigning king (where you don’t have a choice).
steve42
July 12th, 2012 11:30 pmNO.
No, no and no.
Right now, there are so many devices capable of accessing the web and your web site in a myriad of resolutions and capabilities.
IE6 is just one of many, and better than most.
Once you decide to have an open door policy, all may enter, catered to as is appropriate based on an assessment of their capabilities.
Think of your website as a church, bidding ALL to come and worship, rather than a cult for the chosen few.
Once you have (as the author implores) changed your mindset, you’ll find coding a much more happier task, and the space in front of your keyboard much more pleasant.
Selah.
Charles-Henri
July 13th, 2012 9:07 amI agree with Selah, we have to deal with it, full stop. Users are not all member of the web industry and it’s our job to make our websites working, no matter the browsers.
Of course we all know that dodgy browsers are holding back the web. But at the end of the day, if Miss X located somewhere in the bush can’t display my website on her computer because I don’t like IE, it’s MY fault and thus my responsibility. Why? Because Miss X doesn’t care about those geek problems, she is busy and for her computer is just a tool.
So yes it’s our problem and we have to manage it. That’s why a front end developer is a front end developer, to provide high and low resolution experiences. Not complaining all the time about IE. Sometimes it’s good to look outside our world and listen to real people.
Spitfire
July 13th, 2012 11:26 amBut you see, even in church, there are as a matter of fact, certain codes of conduct.
Like taking off your hat, being quiet and so on.
And microsoft with IE is (sticking to your metaphor) waltzing into church, with a huge bag of chips, constantly stuffing some into his mouth audibly chewing during the whole prayer and while he is at it trying to convince his neighbours to go into the newt pub instead, because it is such a great idea.
To get back to topic:
I know it is party of my job to check if IE is properly doing what i can count on with other browsers because i care about being compliant to standards. But that does not mean that i can not in fact try to raise awareness with people i know and perhapes at some point even within MS.
Because what a jolly world would it be, if MS IE would just accept standards and we would not have to mind it’s fuckups….
Joe
July 14th, 2012 4:00 amSo, I assume, because you care about standards, that you do not use any CSS3 or HTML5 in your work. Both of those are not completed standards so you shouldn’t be using them until they are.
Either the web development industry has had a major turnover of professionals in the last decade+ or the majority is suffering from amnesia. There is a reason IE became the #1 browser and, while corporations had some part in it they aren’t the biggest reason. IE delivered things that web developers wanted, regardless of “standards” and we (web developers) were happy to use and advocate IE over Netscape. We’ve grown up a lot since then, most of us have a better understanding of the role of web standards and we care a lot more about those standards. Even with how much we care about standards these days, we still forgo them when we can do something cool as long as FF and Chrome support it.
And on the “corporations use IE and you have no choice in it so that’s why it has so much market share” argument. Come on, really? If IE (8 and 9) are so bad, why do IT people continue to support it? Why wouldn’t they force their users to use FF or Chrome? Don’t use the “it’s so integrated” argument either, it’s not difficult to remove the IE icon from the desktop and set the default browser to something else. The integration argument was nullified with Windows XP SP2.
Nick
July 16th, 2012 6:51 amCome on, really? If IE (8 and 9) are so bad, why do IT people continue to support it?
==================================
Are you kidding? That’s your excuse? At my Fortune 500 company, our IT staff supports 10,000 plus laptops and computers with Windows XP and IE8 maximum. You think its because Windows XP and IE8 are so awesome? Give us all a break.
1. The IT tech guys are too lazy to want to upgrade everyone’s laptop. Of course its a massive overture… but why not everytime you get a new laptop, you KEEP whatever OS is on it? No, that would be too easy. They actually DOWNGRADE brand new Win7 compatible laptops to WinXP to maintain the status quo. So the brand new laptops actually run WORSE than a 5 yr old laptop because WinXP doesnt support all that new hardware.
2. They dont have a clue how to support other OS’s, so they would have to actually UPGRADE their certification skills and learn Vista and 7 or even OSX. Again, too much work.
3. Job security….plain and simple. When you have to rely on tech support to fix your PC problems because MS doesnt support it anymore, you have job security, and its just easier to “tell” the CEO’s that it would be too costly to upgrade 10,000 laptops to Win 7.
4. I have actually had IT people make system wide changes, and not tell anyone, and then when you go to them telling them you dont have access to somethign anymore, they blame you by saying “next time, login the same way everytime”, and then I told them I NEVER CHANGED THE WAY I LOGGED IN.
I actually got so frustrated with the POS WinXP laptop, I tried using my Sony Vaio with Vista to log into our VPN, and they said “they dont support non company provided laptops”… when it should be VERY simple to provide me access to our VPN. What a joke.
Anyone who thinks IT people are the all knowing poobahs dont have a clue.
Anna
July 18th, 2012 12:26 amNick, I hate to tell you this but the IT Techs can easily update the entire network of devices in a few hours using pushes or MSI updates. Aside from the fact that they feel more comfortable supporting the software they already know, most IT won’t update because there’s not enough user training available. Users would throw a fit and become a major headache.. for the most part they don’t take well to change. Many users can’t adjust to a new browser (or worse an OS) which is why they still have IE6.
It’s a browser… it’s FREE… So why not update? It’s not the price or the steps to update it’s the fact that it’s the user’s SECURITY blanket. Unfortunately, no one is going to be able to yank the security blanket from the user and there’s not a law in place to sanction Microsoft for putting out a non-compliant browser.
That said, I feel if Microsoft has seats on the W3C they should at the very least adhere to the rules they have approve(d) and implement(ed). Which they haven’t done in the past.
Kyle
July 20th, 2012 7:24 amTo add to Anna, in reply to Nick, it’s true. The IT guys can update the entire network and there’s just some things they don’t support. Usually, it’s not the IT department’s fault, it’s just company policy. I worked in a corporate IT department and whenever they started rolling out Windows 7, it was a nightmare. The had to keep certain people on XP because some of the software that the company is built on requires it. Don’t even get me started on the 32/64 bit compatibility. It’s just that a lot of the internal structures just were only designed for IE, and when the developers were gone we were left with a very small (and uninformative) user manual.
And dear lord, if you have a Microsoft based company and wanted to bring in some Macs… good luck with that integration.
Even though I slightly disagree with this article, I understand the issue. Honestly, I try and tell everyone to upgrade as often as I can and try not to use IE. It’s just one of those things, if I have obviously better (supported) options to choose from for the same price, why would I continue to use the one that causes the most problems? It’s like allowing the bully to continue picking on the nerds, while they never receive the credit they deserve.
Mike Widdess
July 13th, 2012 8:33 pmIE9 is more tolerant to html errors than Chrome ore Firefox.
This means that you can browse more HTML 5 pages.
However I suspect IE9 is complicit in traffic management.
When I phoned Three.co.uk about problems accessing their own website, via 3 mobile broadband, the operator logged into my machine and saw the error message.
She then told me to try Chrome. Strangely it worked.
If that is not traffic management then how can this be explained.
JohnC
July 18th, 2012 6:20 pmAt the end of the day you have to ask yourself if you are going to be a professional and an adult or a childish amateur. A professional works within the constraints they are given and strives to improve the situation. A child throws up the game board and says “I don’t wanna”.
ie, get out of
September 6th, 2012 4:21 amIn that case I’m a child: “I don’t wanna make the same thing twice only to support the stubborn ones who are lazy enough to make the 3 clicks that takes to upgrade their browser”.
Edward Meehan
July 12th, 2012 7:59 pmUgh…. we will be fighting this fight till the end of days. March on nerds, swords in hand, to do battle with the evil browsers of the world.
Teresa
July 17th, 2012 12:02 amTo the battle of browsers!!!
I shall hold the honorable Chrome flag!
Onwards!!
Michael Meininger
July 12th, 2012 8:00 pmI tried to read the article but my IE kept crashing… :(
Andre Morgan
July 13th, 2012 3:32 pmGood one!
Pavel Antolík
July 17th, 2012 6:59 amSir, you made my day ^^
expressions
July 17th, 2012 12:27 pmIts then a problem with your machine. Get it checked up. :)
Steve Crandall
July 12th, 2012 8:33 pmMicrosoft is always behind the 8-ball when it comes to supporting web standards. I do not think it should frustrate the author of the article, or anyone else, that the previous articles were complaining about browsers not containing standards. At the end of the day, we all want to deliver for design customers with as minimal effort as possible. Time is money. So, these previous articles are simply spouting off steam on the fact that Microsoft is a bit behind when it comes to standards (mostly web) and sometimes it appears as though they are doing this because they want to introduce their own proprietary concepts in order to sell more software.
Zoltan Hawryluk
July 12th, 2012 8:52 pmI totally agree with both sides of the argument. IE is holding the web back with lack of autoupdate and this is not going to change even Microsoft, by some miracle, does add autoupdate to IE10. Even though it is better than its predecessors, it is still frustrating when you want to use new-shiny-HTML5-CSS3-INSERT-NEW-TECH-HERE and IE doesn’t support it.
However, I look at the “What Do We Do With IE” Issue as more of an opportunity than a problem. There have been a lot of polyfills/shims/compatibility libraries/work arounds/research done to help alleviate “IE Stress”, and knowing about these techniques, when to use each one, when not to, etc, is the mark of a great web developer as opposed to good one. A friend of mine who is a C developer said that he hated web programming because of this, but I think it separates the men and women from the boys and the girls. If you want to be a web dev, it’s the price of admission. I may whine about it in private, but clients like it when you offer solutions around it.
Fringe of memory
July 14th, 2012 6:12 pmThe top skill, “the mark of a great web developer”, would be coping-and-pasting polyfills/shims/… ?
I would prefer to see web developer competing in reinventing UI and UX not in filling their pages with cumbersome code for bad browsers
Adam
July 19th, 2012 8:34 pmand now, back to reality.
Barry Horbal
July 12th, 2012 9:18 pmI think I am going to take the middle ground on this.
I agree with the idea that we need to work with the browsers we are given and use them in the best ways we can to meet our client’s needs. If you look at your client’s stats and they have a high percentage of users browsing in IE7 and IE8, are you simply going to ignore those users and give them a lack-luster experience simply because you don’t approve of Microsoft’s politics when it comes to making web browsers?
On the other hand, the reason that Microsoft finally started taking IE seriously was because web developers started speaking out about the problems, letting Microsoft know that they would have to shape up or ship out.
Bottom line: don’t complain with your work mates and clients, just build websites. Save the revolt for those who need to hear it.
David Aimi
July 12th, 2012 9:33 pmTo quote “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”.
No, multiple browsers is what makes the web annoying. If you build things correctly to standards, then perhaps, your sites and applications will work on them all. Oh wait, just kidding, IE basically ignored all standards until IE9. What makes the web beautiful are standards and progression as a whole.
“No one is saying you can’t use RGBA. ” – Do you work for yourself? Otherwise that’s another incorrect statement. Many people work in environments where progressive enhancement is not even possible, meaning, we can’t use modern code. For instance, a rounded CSS3 button would likely show up as a square in <IE9. Very frequently, you will get the "that's not acceptable" from your QA department. Having to jump these hoops are what people are blaming Internet Explorer for. why b
Your argument is like saying people who don't like paying taxes need to stop complaining. You're required to do it, and it'll never be enjoyable. Let the people complain, it doesn't mean they enjoy their job any less, if anything it means they have a passion for the things that browsers are doing right.
René de Kat
July 13th, 2012 10:29 amSo what you’re saying is: QA is holding back the web. Decision makers are too. They have to be educated. They force us to spend an enormous amount of time implementing things in older browsers that add no value. It’s like saying: here’s a 1960 Lada, and now u must be as quick as Vettels 2012 Red Bull. Of course you can’t do this, but you can still drive the circuit. Similat means, similar experience, but not EXACTLY the same.
Fringe of memory
July 14th, 2012 5:16 pmBrowsers are free. To update costs a few minutes and brings many advantages to the user and to the rest of the world too! I can’t see any reasonable argument to support the Status Quo. I can’t understand why Zakas is frustated by Lazaris’s article, that simply encourages the old browser users to update, making them aware of the reality and of the risks they are facing. His frustration is quite not understandable to me.
Progressive Enhancement is a contribution to mantain the Status Quo: if you don’t see something wrong in the sites you are visiting with an old browser, you can’t understand what you are losing. Why we should embrace PE as a solution if it is a part of the problem? PE is not self-evident or something to assume as a dogma. PE is an old masochistic attitude. Time to change!
Jean-Philippe Encausse
July 16th, 2012 5:23 pm10 years ago, when IE6 comes to life and Netscape 4 died Fortune 500 spent hundred thousand dollars to create internal webapp based on ActiveX… (in banking, finance, …)
Moving from IE6 to IE9 for a new fresh Intranet is a real pain because they will have to code all 200 internal website. IT can’t handle 2 browser on laptops … ;-)
So it’s 10years of pain for us. And I cry each time a designer make round corner without thinking about target browser: IE8 … Client is stuck to the photoshop result…
Luke Robbins
July 19th, 2012 1:09 pmWrong, IE8 was the first browser to support CSS 2.1 and XHTML 1.1 completely.
Most browser problems are more to do with the fact that most web developers write shocking code (and this is just the markup), if there is proper markup you greatly reduce the number of problems you have.
Most older version of IE and their flaws are well know and most of the complaints and problems experienced with Internet Explorer 6 are thoroughly documented on MSDN.
Haters gonna
September 6th, 2012 4:47 amWhat makes the web beautiful is a wide range of designs and ui experiences. Browsers are the Internet equivalent to bureaucracy; they can make the process faster or slower, and most of the time it’s an emotional choice. Microsoft has the potential to make ie THE BROWSER, instead they make the internet’s Buffon.
Thomas Waters
July 12th, 2012 9:46 pmGood article, however, this is a fairly crazy statement: ” If they had waited for feature parity with Chrome or Firefox, we probably still wouldn’t have Internet Explorer 9.” And waiting for a fully featured browser would be bad.. because….. Microsoft is a HUGE company and has all the money and staff it needs to do just about anything, and this is your reason to say what’s missing in 9 is OK? Crazy!
Please note, I’m not trashing IE 9, rather your rationale is a bit lacking.
Nicolai
July 13th, 2012 1:50 amYou are absolutely right! Microsoft has all needed to make the best, fastest, most standards-compliant and developer-friendly browser in the entire world. So, the question is… why the f*** aren’t they making it??!
As a rational human being I won’t just accept things when I know they can be better. Especially not for a company with $58 billion in cash on hand.
Dan Gibbs
July 14th, 2012 5:33 amPersonally I believe the web is too progressive for a closed-source browser to stay ahead with standards and implementing new features. Other browsers are built on an open source foundation (Firefox, Chrome/Chromium, Safari etc). The obvious exception to that would be Opera but that is their flagship product whereas IE isn’t Microsoft’s.
I disagree with the article on points. You have the right to complain as both a consumer (if you use Windows as Microsoft claims its an integral part of the system) and as a developer as it holds you back. It IS your/out job as a developer to get it to work as the end user doesn’t care, and you can’t expect them too, but previous versions HAVE held us back and at the end of the day waste man hours fixing things that shouldn’t be required for a standards compliant website.
An Australian shopping website has an “IE Tax” for purchasing products using IE 6,7 and 8 purely because of the loss of man hours. Time costs money and although its not the users fault its also not ours! :)
Adam
July 19th, 2012 8:43 pmIE Tax!!! hah! thats a clever idea actually!!
And BTW… your point about closed source software is spot on.
Releasing 1 version of your browser over a 2 year span (or whatever) is just unacceptable nowadays IMO… And on top of that, not supporting legacy browsers of their own OS
:S
Anyway, silly neverending debate that smashingmag is cashing in on no doubt.
ie, get out of
September 6th, 2012 4:33 amThe problem lies in the fact that Microsoft has never been able to remove itself from bill gate’s monopolistic view of the world: they just try to impose the new standard, only making things difficult for anyone else. The need to move on from this stubborn view of things.
Rui
July 13th, 2012 11:07 amYou’re absolutely right. We can see the Apple’s example. Safari is not the best browser but it’s one of the best, when we talk about web-standards and moving forward the web. (With the webkit stuff…)
At this moment I’m testing Safari 6 (Mountain Lion OSX) and I can say that it’s not only fast, but seems to be much more light than the previous versions. Totally thinking to move from Chrome to Safari again. And, the most important thing, as always, they just follow the standards that we all need, at this time.
Microsoft was(is) always behind everybody and always giving us excuses why they are on that position. Seriously, really pisses me off. We need the technology working, today. Internet Explorer 9 is much better than the previous versions, but it’s still a big mess when we talk about the web-standards and it’s the only one that make me spend more time to get my job done. Time is money.
Luke Robbins
July 19th, 2012 1:12 pmThrowing programmers at the problem is well known to be counter productive.
Evan Verworn
July 19th, 2012 3:01 pmHow about some decent Software Engineers…
Meh
July 22nd, 2012 8:46 amAFAICT, in most places, a “software engineer” is just a programmer who works in a large company that values feel-good business jargon over words with actual substance and meaning. Depending on how loosely you define “engineer”, either almost all programmers are engineers, or absolutely none of them are.
Smiley Tom
July 12th, 2012 9:54 pmI’d like to say I partially agree with this article.
I’ll totally in favour of using progressive enhancement to improve the UX on capable browsers.
The problem is, sometimes I receive graphics including features easily achieved using HTML/CSS techniques supported by all but IE8 and below. However, the client doesn’t care about this and expects those features to look/function in the same way across all browsers we support (including IE7-9). That’s where progressive enhancement isn’t really an option.
Often I implement the features supported by browsers released at least a month or two prior, then apply hacks for IE7-8, usually in the form of a ‘polyfill’ (usually selectivizr if I’ve used the >3 year old ‘:nth-child’ selector) or separate JS/jQuery file. The non-IE browsers tend to have a good upgrade policy anyway so I don’t worry about whether they’ll support the new features.
Shall also mention that using SASS/Compass for CSS development has alleviated a lot of the problems I’ve had with IE7 as many of the hacks are applied for you.
So progressive enhancement – great in theory, but not always an option in a commercial setting.
Andre Leubner
July 12th, 2012 10:15 pmIf we can’t hate Microsoft, whom can we hate instead?
Some company has to fill the gap.
Brian
July 12th, 2012 11:28 pmApple, Sony, CenturyLink, Monsanto, DeBeers, Wal-Mart, or Goldman-Sachs. Take your pick from those or any of a dozen others.
Nick
July 16th, 2012 6:54 amWhy do you want to hate those companies? Any specific reason or because you follow the left wing talking points of “greedy corporations”?
Nicolai
July 13th, 2012 1:51 amOracle
Rui
July 13th, 2012 11:12 amWe don’t need to pick some company to hate.
They do that job by themselves.
…And Microsoft is always on top of that list. :)
Bob
July 12th, 2012 11:03 pm“Internet Explorer 9, on the other hand, is a damn good browser”
Whoa whoa whoa, let’s not say anything we can’t take back…
Timothy Robb
July 13th, 2012 7:50 pmSadly, I just spent three hours removing malware off of a friends computer that utilized and infiltrated IE. The user had IE9. I can’t say how she got the malware, but IE is an easy target for malware regardless of your Anti-malware software. And I really hate cleaning up the mess. If possible, I recommend uninstalling it and using something with much better security features.
I also recommend uninstalling all e-mail clients, including Windows Live Mail and sticking strictly with web mail access to your email accounts. (Note, you can add multiple email accounts to your GMAIL).
Following these precautions, I’ve not had any malware on my Windows 7 PC for years.
Lalith Muthali
July 14th, 2012 2:43 amAre you seriously blaming the browser for the users fault? This is like blaming the car after hitting someone with it.
DW
July 14th, 2012 5:22 amI use IE, Chrome, Firefox, and occasionally Safari. The only one I’ve had hit by drive-by malware this year was Chrome and it has happened twice. That’s two more times than I’ve had the others infected in the last three years.
IE 7 was a security nightmare, 8 less so. I have yet to get infected using 9.
David
July 13th, 2012 10:44 pm@Bob
LOL, awesome.
Cameron Malek
July 12th, 2012 11:31 pmI don’t like this “that’s just the way it is” attitude. It goes against the idea of trying to improve or fight for the betterment of things, and that seems like the opposite of the direction the web development community has been going, i.e. the increased awareness and enforcement of standards, among other practices and new tools.
David
July 13th, 2012 10:48 pmTotally agree. My grandpa, as much as I love him, has a lot of racist tendencies created by the environment he grew up in.
When he says, “That’s just the way I am, deal with it,” I’d always say that if everyone thought the same way, nothing would ever change.
I strive to acknowledge frustrations and work to improve them while not ignoring the reality of how things are now.
While IE is a reality now, that doesn’t mean we should keep quiet about it. What some call “complaining”, others call “pleas for progress”.
Brian
July 12th, 2012 11:32 pmIE isn’t perfect, but none of the other browsers are as well (though IE is trailing the pack). It’s better than it has been in the past.
But the long and the short of it is, dealing with browser incompatibilities is really what separates the men from the boys (or girls from the women if you prefer) in Web Development. I’ve been working in this industry since IE 3 and Netscape 2. Heck, we’d even see an occasional Mosaic user in the wild back then. You want to see incompatibilities and browser messes, try those.
Sitting back and whining about it doesn’t fix the problem. You try to educate your audience, but they are the customer. You don’t get to cherry-pick who your audience is.
Jim Forbes
July 12th, 2012 11:39 pmFull Ecma support:
IE8 ecma3? No
IE9 ecma5? No
IE11 ecma harmony? No
IE12 ecma harmony? No
Nuff said…
Michael Dengler
July 13th, 2012 12:44 amIE9 – Ecma5 – Yes
“Offering faster browsing, HTML5, CSS3, ECMA5 scripting support and other features, it has dumped the gimmicks of IE8 (did anyone really use Accelerators?) to improve the core browsing experience.”
CJ McFadden
July 12th, 2012 11:39 pmAs much as I enjoyed this article (especially as a response from a talented web designer) I disagree with Nicholas’ point of view.
IE has refused to rise against it’s own ego in the past and has placed itself in the cross-hairs of every developer by perpetuating a “you will use what we tell you to use” attitude. Ultimately, their agenda of “world domination thru shear numbers” is what has led to their browser discrepancies. It is hard to divide your time between barking consumers and product enhancement when you are to busy working on proprietary ways to keep your old product on every computer.
dj
July 13th, 2012 12:12 amHallelujah!!! Finally, somebody with a lick of sense! I really appreciate you writing this article because I have been trying to “chill” enough since reading that previous “woe is us” article that I could respond civilly. What I’ve noticed in being a “non-remunerated” blog developer for years, and following probably 50 web-industry “opinion leaders” religiously for longer than that; is, that it seems many “wannabe” writers regurgitate a “let’s hate IE” (or Microsoft, or Windows) article any time they are short on time or run out of ideas. A character on the TV show “Burn Notice” calls spy’s “bitchy little girls” which I think of every time I read something like that previous article (which, unfortunately isn’t rare). Of course, even the great Smashing Magazine isn’t above “shock-jocking” merely to increase “ratings” – and this may be some of that; but, even my “uninitiated” father warned me 50 years ago that “it’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”
In addition, what I’ve noticed is that the “lets blame IE” type of person is often the same one who rarely lifts a finger to actually “do” anything about it besides complain in a public forum trying to obtain support for his misguided attitude. While it is true that users of IE6-7 have diminished to the point of rarity, I still currently know personally 27 people who are still in that category and not one of them are doing it to be a burden on our poor “hand-wringing” web-developing colleagues; believe it or not, they don’t even have a clue who you are! The twenty-seven are those who I haven’t yet been able to help out of the hole they are in, either for financial or data-rate or employer or non-web related software issues.
The answer isn’t all the angst or the arbitrary “let’s sock it to these bastards” warnings or threats on pop-ups. And frankly, it wouldn’t even enter my mind to deliberately harm someone’s web experience when it was in my power to give him information in a pleasing way that they could adequately use. I cannot deny that I’m a bit disgusted when I see developers advocating such measures. Frankly, we should thank God every day that Microsoft was around to pretty much single-handedly keep the internet free and user based. The business model of Netscape and others – namely that you should pay substantially for every browser you used on your computer, every time they wanted to throw an upgrade to you – was thwarted by a “free” browser coming with an operating system. Are we so naive or forgetful to think that if Steve Job’s, Apple business model had been the only choice – i.e. completely proprietary and exorbitantly priced – we would even have an industry as robust as it is today? Thank heaven for Microsoft and IBM who largely initiated and paved the way for open source, and set price-points within reach of the “common” people!
I think the majority of developers I’ve met are bigger than this. And to lump IE8 and 9 in with 6 and 7 is… well… simply pathetic.
Darwin Santos
July 13th, 2012 12:54 amWhile you’re right in a thing or two, still there’s no such thing as an excuse for such a lousy product as IE, all of its versions. Sitting on the idea of not demanding a better quality of the “tools” we use, as you called it in your analogy, is simply letting more than enough room for the mediocrity to become the standard. I will not support IE until Microsoft releases a fully functional version, all IE versions feel like beta to me.
I am happy that the brakes in my car have nothing to do with IE. Would you drive a car with such little quality standards as IE?
Steve Kent
July 13th, 2012 9:56 amdj
I wholeheartedly agree with you, Brian and steve42. For now, IE(6) exists. Deal with it.
Adam
July 14th, 2012 2:39 amLOL!!!!1!!
“Frankly, we should thank God every day that Microsoft was around to pretty much single-handedly keep the internet free and user based.”
Pedro H.
July 13th, 2012 12:59 amI just one have to say one thing:
If you are developing with a STANDARD specification, then all software must render EXACTLY and UNIFORMLY ADHERE to that SPEC. IE’s has a long way to go. So what if a browser has Clear View or provide better security? For the users ok, that’s fine. And for the developers? Why do we have to scratch our heads thinking where we went wrong developing the site?
I don’t hate Internet Explorer itself, but I hate it’s lack of not adhering to a standard and enforce their own while forgetting there developers out there, other than those of Microsoft. They can have HTA’s but please, let it be standards and render stuff as they should… I will not stop blaming Microsoft’s IE until it has proven that it can render stuff other browsers can, without having me to resort to tweaks or hacks, thus bloating my website and making it slow…
mark
July 13th, 2012 8:21 amthe few bytes it takes to support a microsoft or Chrome or Firefox bug wont “bloat your site or make it slow”
seriously?
a conditional if in IE or a Javascript shim for Firefox, Opera, Safari?
people who say that either cant code or dont know how to use google.
Pedro H.
July 14th, 2012 12:20 amSeriously… Is it much to ask all browsers to render standards? I really don’t care about vendor specific properties or unsupported tags. I just need to code something in browser A and it works well on other browsers. Really, why to I have to resort to tweaks when the software I render my webpage does not so? Browsers should have us save time rather than spending it in the everlasting quest of fixing browser rendering engine issues…
René de Kat
July 13th, 2012 10:40 amI have yet to come across an area where theory and reality live in perfect harmony. Everywhere you have to deal with less than ideal situations. Not just only in IT. The question is: do you sit and complain or try to make the best of it?
You can’t force people, because they’ll go into defense mode. However you can guide them. Slowly! My mother taught me that good things take time. This was usually about cooking, but I’ve learned it applies everywhere.
Pedro H.
July 14th, 2012 12:25 amAgreed. But if you code something in any language (PHP, C, JS, wtvr ) results will be the same. Take Java and Android. Dalvik engine knows Java and should work well with it, right?
Just asking a call to rendering standards that should be ubiquitous. Not asking too much.
To answer your question: I have no choice but to do both sitting and complain and try to make the best of it. God knows how many times i’ve been forced to tackle IE’s lack of decent rendering… If it is a box with 500px why I don’t get 500px in all browsers?…. That’s is a question that we all should be asking about… Why always tweaking around, fixing, tweaking and fixing again?….
Josh
July 13th, 2012 1:01 amI agree with this line: “What makes the Web beautiful is precisely that there are multiple browsers”. We need to be careful we don’t fixate on a specific browser or device (take -webkit prefixes for example). Unfortunately, IE sucks; 9 and 10 do to. I can see where you’re coming from when you say 9 is mych better than 6 (it really is), but the truth is that it’s like beating your own score on the mile. IE’s not even in the race, but they’re doing better than last time! We need to stop making excuses for this company. Just because they have their hand in everything doesn’t (read: shouldn’t) give them an excuse to do a poor job. Think for a second about amazon, apple, and google. What have they done? How did they execute it? Now think about MS, and what they’ve done? No comparison. Lots of resources, wasted.
Eric Stoltz
July 13th, 2012 1:25 amIf developers had not constantly voiced their concerns over Internet Explorer, Microsoft would never have stepped up to the plate with IE 9. Saying people should just put up and shut up is not the way to prod a lethargic corporation toward improvement. And unless their feet are held to the fire, Microsoft will just let IE 9 improvement lag. That’s their proven nature. Yes, it would be lovely to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that NOW they are seriously going to do the right thing, but It’s the old Lucy-and-the-football syndrome that makes us skeptical.
And to say that “It is from within constraints that creativity is born” is not helpful. Dealing with IE 6-8 is not an exercise in creativity; it is usually an exercise in frustration. It’s not some fun challenge, it’s untold hours of working late and cancelling dinner only to find it’s a return or something stupid that broke everything. That’s not my idea of creativity.
Pedro H.
July 14th, 2012 12:27 amAgreed!
Christa
July 13th, 2012 1:41 amYour article seems contradictory to me in that you tell us to stop complaining, but openly admit our complaining has pushed Microsoft to start listening and make positive changes.
When has silence helped reformation?
René de Kat
July 13th, 2012 10:42 amThere is a difference between complaining and constructive feedback.
David
July 14th, 2012 4:56 pmAlso, he’s complaining about people complaining :-P
Chatman R.
July 13th, 2012 2:57 amI have to admit I’ve directed both some tongue-in-cheek humor and rage in IE’s direction — IE6 in particular. I can’t say I was right in the trenches when the web was young and tags and spinning globe gifs ran rampant, but I do know IE became a nightmare as the industry shifted toward standards compliance. I do know Microsoft resisted while using market share as a sword to fend off progress. That’s part of the reason I was extremely skeptical about IE9.
It’s great that Microsoft has taken a step in the right direction, but we can’t ignore that they’re taking that step reluctantly. It’s awesome that they’ve slowly phased out IE6, but there’s still the shadow of IE7-8. IE9 itself, as some have noted, isn’t updated as often as other major browsers and will be outpaced as a result. We may face the same problem with a different skin soon enough.
As developers, I don’t think the IE hate comes from simple laziness or that IE serves as some sort of skill gate separating professionals from hobbyists. The problem is not that we have to think creatively to solve the many issues that IE presents, it’s that these issues have already been resolved. Revisiting them only extends development time in a way that isn’t meaningful to the project.
I also agree with Smiley Tom and others that sometimes expectations and the project environment can make progressive enhancement a hurdle. That’s why I think it’s our job as designers and developers to communicate the advantages to the client in a way they understand. Show them how supporting legacy browsers directly impacts their bottom line (increased development time, tons of backtracking, increased page load from polyfills may frustrate those with slower connections, etc.).
The web is changing, and we have to change with it. We have to encourage our clients to change with it. Show them that sites can work well without micromanaging non-critical parts of the experience. We have to show complacent vendors that market share is not enough to sway us from doing things right. This isn’t just about Internet Explorer; we have to keep our forward momentum.
Mark
July 13th, 2012 3:01 amI blame IE for all my ill will and woes.
Seriously though, I’ve had two relationships utterly destroyed because of Microsoft. Who’s to blame? The guy that uses Chrome and Firefox as a guest once or the one who has been using IE since forever?
Ryan Mayer
July 13th, 2012 3:53 amI’m not sure I can add more to this than what has already been said. Sympathy for the weakest browser, consistantly, isn’t part of our job and yes, it IS holding the advancement of what we do back.
The only reason we have to even care about IE is that fact that it is bundled with many corporate servers of which are often very reluctant to upgrade.
It would be a beautiful world if we all could just ignore the weakest link in the chain and keep moving forward, like everyone else has been trying to do.
This article, with all due respect, I find weak and a poor excuse to write an article. “Can’t we all get along” is fine and dandy, and I’m sure the majority of us here have been doing that for years. Which, obviously, is what fuels the dislike of IE, period.
I’m sure you could be happy on your brick cell phone from the 80′s, or your video tapes or even your reel-to-reel movies. Most of us enjoy thinking of how to improve the world and like to contribute to it. After all, that is what has brought us here… allowing you to post this article, have people comment from their phones, ipads, computers… Imagine… if we all just accepted the weakest link in the chain where we would be.
Firefox Guy
July 13th, 2012 4:31 amUm, really? Step back a moment and look at the current browser landscape. How can you defend a browser that has no respect for web standards and has consistently failed to keep up with the pace of the web.
Look at how often browsers like Chrome and Firefox are updated. When was the last time IE got a meaningful update?
Even putting the frequency of updates aside, there’s absolutely no excuse for distributing a product that is so utterly flawed and inferior like IE. It’s a disgrace, and Microsoft should feel ashamed of themselves.
I don’t have a problem with all Microsoft products. It’s just IE that to me is an aberration that should be eradicated from the world and never return; and I mean IE6 to 9. I can’t speak for 10, but if the past is anything to go by, 10 will ultimately suck too at some point.
Justin Carroll
July 13th, 2012 5:18 amI don’t support IE on my personal projects and I don’t lose sleep over it. Microsoft has more funds than any competeing browser and yet they’re the most incompatible – they screw their users, not developers, not me. I’m not held back because to me they don’t exist. Life’s too short to care. We’ve spent too much of our careers hacking our way through their dumb browser – it’s time they bend to our will or lose market share which we’re already seeing. Good riddance.
Jelina
July 13th, 2012 7:21 amThank you–I was beginning to think I was the only web developer left in the world who still cared about making sites work in IE. (However, based on the comments in this article, I still think I’m in the minority.)
I know it’s not always easy to develop for IE–and I definitely agree that we should continue demanding excellent, standards-compliant browsers from every vendor–however I don’t understand why web developers insist on punishing the user for Microsoft’s mistakes. A lot of the time, these people usually don’t know any better or have absolutely no choice in the matter. (And don’t get me started on how terribly ineffective or unusable sites are that try to “educate” users about IE with popups or pseudo information bars or whatever.)
On a side note, I’m a little curious about the clients of web developers who don’t develop for IE. What happens when they or their friends look at your site in IE? Do you always preview it to them in your office so they don’t have the chance? Do you force them to upgrade / download a new browser?
Pedro H.
July 14th, 2012 12:37 amI guess no one here, including me, despite my vicious comments against IE, want’s to force a user to download a browser or shifting to other just because a website calls it. When I code, I try to check my code against IE, but let us say a patch from Microsoft fixes a bug, and then your fix will mess up the website. How much time you think you will be spending searching the bug, fixing it, testing and then upload it?
Just wasting time with something that should be rendered correctly by default…
Jelina
July 31st, 2012 9:32 amI agree–Microsoft should’ve done it correctly to begin with and shouldn’t have been so arrogant to believe that they would always be on top.
Fringe of memory
July 14th, 2012 7:30 pm“I don’t understand why web developers insist on punishing the user for Microsoft’s mistakes.”
It can be easily reversed, Jelina: why web developers insist on punishing themselves and/or their clients (someone is going to pay for the extra work needed) and the users of good browsers (cared less), for Microsoft’s mistakes? And why not prizing standard compliant browsers?
Or: why IE users insist on punishing web developers and themselves, when it is (at least for most of them) very easy to install a good browser?
And: why to be frustrated by the Lazaris’ effort to make IE users aware of their real condition and opportunities?
Please, let’s take in count the overall landscape and all the stakeholders involved here, not just one of them. At any time, resources are finite: wasting time, money and bandwidth is a danger for all.
Jelina
July 31st, 2012 9:18 amI had a hard time answering this. I agree with every point you’ve made… in theory. In practice, I’ve found that it’s not as clear-cut.
You’re completely correct when you say that we shouldn’t be punishing ourselves for Microsoft’s mistakes. However–and I’m sure I’m not alone in this–I define a good web developer as one whom can create a site that ensures their users achieve their tasks as quickly and as easily as possible… Isn’t ignoring IE in direct conflict with that?
I also agree that it is easy and relatively painless to download a better browser–if you know (and care) what a web browser is to begin with. (If you scoffed at that, I completely understand–it’s hard to imagine when you, your friends and your colleagues can’t escape the browser war… But I assure you, these people exist. Thankfully, Google pushing Chrome is slowly eradicating this problem–but it’s not completely gone.)
Another related point: What about the people who have no control over the browser they use at work?
I once had to force Firefox to authenticate as IE through my company’s proxy just to be able to connect to the internet on my mac; which meant the sites I visited also thought I was IE. (It was hilarious at first, but then the messages and warnings about using a terrible browser just became annoying. The ones that actually PREVENTED me from using their site were particularly infuriating.)
This leads into your second last point: education. Any web dev worth their salt knows that users ignore anything that isn’t directly related to whatever it is they’re trying to do… so why do we think messages and warnings about IE will actually work?
I’m not defending IE–I just think that, if we’re not developing for IE, we’re only doing half our job.
James Hatfield
July 17th, 2012 7:49 amHave you ever tried to resolve IE’s various memory leaks? How about the complete nonsense of their event system or the COM implementation of the DOM? IE9 is much better but still a dog. it’s only through the magic of Jquery and other frameworks that anyone can afford to support those legacy browsers 7&8 (6 is dead).
A simple website is not a problem. A 100 million annual ecommerce business. That’s a problem. Luckily it’s a problem for everyone, so all websites provide a poor experience on IE.
Polyfills,, Shims, etc just add more burden to an already slow engine. Sure it looks right but then you go to interact and it’s slow as molasses, while in Chrome it’s like a native application – blazing fast, no overhead and good memory management and full support for all the features.
The whole time you think – “wish I had time to test this on a tablet or smartphone, too bad I spent all day debugging IE issues. “
Jelina
July 31st, 2012 9:30 amYou’re right, James. It’s worse than terrible. However, the point I was trying to make was more about people not developing for IE (which, if I ever had to do it, would feel like I’d only done half my job) and not about providing the same experience across all browsers (which is near impossible with IE).
The end users are all that matter, and we have to accomodate them as best we can.
Jonath Lee
July 13th, 2012 7:22 amAs a web designer, I prefer to not hack CSS just to make IE display things properly…
Using webfonts on webpage nowadays is great, providing more flexibility on our designs.
But IE seems to get the bad rendering…as mentioned in http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/11/avoiding-faux-weights-styles-google-web-fonts/
misty
July 13th, 2012 7:34 amDon’t blame IE ..use some java script in header section :P
aker
July 13th, 2012 7:39 amI stopped complaining about Internet Explorer the day I decided to drop full support for it.
My choice are the standards, if MS-IE doesn’t follow the standards is its problem, not mine, so I decided to Educate my website’s visitors trough a campaign and invite em to experience the improved experience of browsing the internet using a modern & standard browser.
“Internet Explorer 9, on the other hand, is a damn good browser…” I can’t share your experience as internaut.
Lalith Muthali
July 14th, 2012 2:53 amFeel sorry for your clients, they are being forced to piss on 25% if not more of their client/consumer base because of your inability to adhere to common sense.
Felix
July 15th, 2012 2:53 pmYes, and if you would have the possibility you would send all those users of outdated browsers to prison.
The web is communication. Therefore, the job of web programmers and designers is to communicate to people. If they speak another language than those you speak, then you have to make a translation to make communication possible. If they use other hardware or software that you prefer you have to deliver your messages in a way that they can receive it.
The web ist not the Sovietunion.
Smusha
July 13th, 2012 8:12 amlost too much money bug fixing IE in the past to stay objective on the argument. just lok at all the replies already.
sry but Microsoft did harm the internet and we are still paying the price, literally.
Felix
July 15th, 2012 3:03 pmNo one needs a web programmer if programming would be so simple because all hardware and software would follow exactly the standards.
The problems with IE6 are with a ten year old browser. At least IE9 works excellent for the user. IE is the best browser who manages the usable displaying of worst programmed websites. This is most important for the user.
Much more a problem are new browsers for tablets which cannot handle basic standard functions like iframes. This ist much more a problem than the complications of IE6 which are well known by every experienced web programmer.
Most here ask for support of HTML5 and CSS 3. These are both no standard. You should not use them because of this.
Beat
July 13th, 2012 9:00 amI agree that IE9 is a better browser than IE6, 7, and 8. It’s even a good browser by Microsofts standards (they set with IE6). I think the problem with IE is not the browser itself anymore, but the long update timespans it has and the fact that microsoft apparently is not able to make some users update their browsers (and their os). There are reasons for this like their 90′s attitude towards developing and selling their os (looong development time and high prices). Other than that, let’s not forget Microsoft has a long history miseducating users about their possibility of choice and using its monopoly power to push browsers that did follow their own standards and not those of the W3C. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation). In this prospect, one has to say they earned every bit of criticism and they still earn it today, because it is not the fact that they wanted to develop a modern browser that made IE9 better, it is they fact they had to. But still, apparently, the pressure is not high enough to make them develop a really really good browser, which would maybe involve shorter development and release timespans.
What you say about constraints & creativity may be right, but I never felt the IE non standards as a constraint to my creativity. They were a nuisance, yes, but other than that, I never found myself thinking about IE when designing and developing (especially since I do not really like rounded corners). I always knew in the back of my head that what I wanted to do would require extra time for IE (the lower the numbers, the more). But constraints to creativity in my opinion are not about the fact that I have to do my layouts again in some sort of other language.
Finally, I saw a lot of «I’m not supporting IE anymore» attitude here. I think it’s alright if someone decides he does not want to spend extra time on developing for IE. I just hope this attitude comes with a message to the IE user on the page urging him or her to change for another browser. Because just showing a broken webpage may be satisfying your anger, but it’s not a service to the client, and it’s not a service to the web in general (supporting IE and suppressing your anger also isn’t). I think it’s the duty of the web-educated people to show the web-unsavvy how they can do better, and make our lives may be a little bit easier. Because if the downward trend continues, and IE looses more market share, maybe Microsoft suddenly develops the ability to develop a really, really good browser.
CEA (www.codemein.net)
July 13th, 2012 9:16 amI believe IE will destroy itself soon because of its poor engine. Browsers should fallow WEB not the opposite way. Therefore IE should fix itself for new trends otherwise no one will use this crap in the future (hopefully).
And also i suppose most of the people who are in developing or designing sector will be preciated with this circumstance.
Alex
July 13th, 2012 9:23 amYou know your right – people should just do what they want and focus on things they want to do – and deal with the sh*t that comes with it!
BUT:
Instead of everyone just keeps their mouth shut about this same ultra anoying subject the web will be a better place.
Ok – it was fun when the first articles about this popped up 4 years ago.
And ok – it still was a little fun to see the folluw-up articles on those as a reaction to the first ones.
But are we really going to do this every f-ing single time when some other old-news-rewriting-so-called-autheur publishes the gazzilioned article about something everyone already knows?
Or is it just a cheap way of getting readers, i don’t know it anymore.
But it’s realy stupid and a waste of everyones time if you ask me.
From now on, i won’t ready another article about start with this now, stop with that yester and why explorer or whateverthe-f is whatever.
Believe me, the article has a very good point, but if everyone just stops with repeating the same stories every year, maybe you’d already found that solution for your problem with IE or whatever!
Good luck – and good bye same old same old articles! ;-)
planet71
July 13th, 2012 10:14 am“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.”
Tell that to all the clients around the world. “Why this button doesn’t have rounded corners in IE? It has to!” – and all that stuff. It would be great if our clients would even understand what progressive enhancement, but mostly they don’t. Offen they use IE and they don’t care that most features that could be easily resolved using css won’t work in IE. So you have js everything just to fit their needs, and that is why IE is so annoying and it’s holding the web back. And what’s even more annoying is that they do want to see every small piece of page looks the same in every browser and mostly the don’t care how much work it requires and how ugly the code becomes. Why? Because they don;t care about the code, they don;t see it and they don’t understand it.
Tom
July 13th, 2012 2:30 pmClients’ lack of understanding of the differences in appearance of their site across browsers, due to progressive enhancement, is a failure to correctly set their expectations up front, before the design or the build begins, not an indictment of the concept.
James Hatfield
July 17th, 2012 7:55 amIf someone does not care you can not make them. No education or attempt to enlighten will change that. If you do not do it the way they want they will find someone who will. Besides, it adds hours they have to pay for.
Markus
July 13th, 2012 10:49 amI agree with Nicholas. If the customer wants the site to run in IE x, than it’s our job to make that happen. It’s like saying your line of business application won’t support Windows XP because it’s mssing feature x and MS should add that feature to a 10+ year old software because you want to use it. Every engineering process has constraints, be it resources, budget or anything else. The constraints are set by the clients and it is the job of the engineer to accomplish what the customer ordered within those constraints.
Now back to IE. Microsofts point of view is that functionality is only added in major releases. Point releases are only for bug fixing and minor changes. With that in mind let’s look at those browsers again: Did IE 6 support all standards the time it was released: yes and some more. Did IE 9 support all standards the time it was released: almost. So what is MS to blame for: too long release cycles in a world that changes fast! Developement within MS speeded up during the last years. So there’s hope for shorter release cycles in the future.
Chrome and Firefox are in fact using a similar approach. They just declared that point releases will be major releases (Waiting for Chrome 100 !). So in order to get security updates you must update to a version with added / changed functionality (rember the changed border-radius functionality in Firefox). This is great for webdevelopers wanting to use the new stuff, but it also is a risk to those that need ro keep older line-of-business sites / apps running.
Is only IE to blame? I guess not. Since skipping IE 6 compatibility, I added more lines of code specifically for mobile browsers. Alot of Android browsers won’t get new functionality in the future. So are those the new IE? What about people stuck on IE 9 mobile with Windows Phone 7. They won’t get any updates either. First / second generation iPhones? Those won’t be supported forever. What about desktop browsers when their metro brothers will be the future on desktop Windows? If you want to blame all those browsers in the future, you will need a lot of time..
So while both arguments are true, the fragmentation of the browser landscape will become bigger and bigger. For developers there is only one conclusion: Make your decision what to suppert and do that as good as possible.
Tim Beck
July 13th, 2012 11:09 amA web surrounding is like a national economy. It would be ideal, if the best wins and the worst vanishes into thin air. But like in the real world the perfect way is always a subjectively biased way.
So on one hand, Microsoft of course won’t let their their top dog just slide away as they won’t do with all their other software. In the last years there has not been much innovative stuff. But because of their size and the number of customers they have, they can just jump on the bandwagon and collect enough earnings with their existing customers. Even if the final experience isn’t as impressive as the initial idea from the inventors. That is a working business model, even though it wouldn’t be mine ;)
On the other side there is also a good reason, a very personal one, to watch out for the things that fall behind. If you do not want to end up like these poor bastards in the finance industries, who had to deal with their overwhelming ego and no boundaries for many years, please stop thinking you live in a vacuum where only your own speed counts. The world is full of complex reasons why old browsers are still online and why they shouldn’t be.
Overall the transition to better browsers hast to move forward, which also means that it sometimes will stop and other times the development goes ahead of our understanding. So just kick back, enjoy the current achievements in web development and once in a while get loud about the things that slow you down…
Jack Sheppard
July 13th, 2012 11:10 amI have more problems with Firefox 3.5 than IE6 anyway.
Mike
July 13th, 2012 11:30 amDear Nicholas,
You mention that complaining is a way of making Microsoft listen, but we should now stop and give them a chance (since I assume they’re now listening, because they said so).
Because we have to model our business and workload, and ultimately sacrifice user-experience due to the laziness of a company or another, that has financial advantages from promoting the use of their products, with complete disrespect for standards. Right?
I mean, disregard we criticized IE5.5 until they came with IE6. We should have stopped there, and accept IE6 as the ultimate browser.
Following your logic, we wouldn’t have IE9 right now.
Complaining, giving negative feedback and constantly requesting better browsers, ensures that we developers can spend more time on building better products and applications, better user-experience which in return means happy users, happy clients.
Obviously you ignore the amount of time needed to use all sorts of polyfills to achieve standards, so that the user has a uniform experience regardless of the browsers. And you obviously ignore the fact that the time spent, is either taken from the actual web product or app development, or from the clients’ budget.
So basically, our products (and the final users), or our clients have to suffer, just so that we wouldn’t complain anymore.
Without complaining about mistakes or lack of improvement, there wouldn’t be any improvements at all, so I’m really baffled by the fact you’re encouraging the suppression of it.
Felix
July 13th, 2012 12:14 pmso if “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.”
Why does it still not have proper css3 support if its “easier” to add new features. Its been around long enough for hundreds of updates. Windows updates are there for a reason..Why doesn’t Microsoft use it to make small incremental updates to the current major version of IE?
I personally hate all versions of IE, IE9 not so much as at least most things work, but the really nice frills that other browsers support degrade gracefully from what I’ve seen in IE (e.g. a div with rounded borders and a gradient, just reverts to a rectangle), no work arounds are needed to make a website not look sh*t in IE9 (that I’ve come across), but for a massive company like Microsoft, its simply not good enough provide a browser that is not up to date with the latest web standards.
IE DOES hold the web back because extra time and consideration is always required to fix IE bugs, when more time could be spent on new stuff.
Rony Mattar
July 13th, 2012 1:27 pmYou’re totally right Felix!!
Rony Mattar
July 13th, 2012 1:25 pmPlease stop defending Microsoft.
I agree with Louis, because why would new born browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari… would always be step forward IE?
It is not acceptable from Microsoft to make a browser that doesn’t support PNG files, it is not acceptable that it does not even support CSS selectors and pseudo-class which can save too much time on the front-end developers.
Microsoft is not a company born yesterday, and they created amazing applications but concerning browsers, the work they are doing is not acceptable at all.
I’m also a WebGL developer, I always advise my clients not to use IE at all, you say they made it from scratch, I don’t like working on a half project, if it is not perfect better not to be public.
HTML5 is an amazing step forward, why most of do not use this technology?
It’s all because of IE bugs and bugs and continuos bugs…
I respect your point of view Mr. Zakas and being a senior developer at Yahoo, this means that you have a respectful background, but I cannot be silent on IE bugs and yes it is holding back the web, this is too much from Microsoft and not acceptable at all.
Steve Stevens
July 13th, 2012 3:41 pmIE browsers are a painful fact of life. Life gets better as Microsoft has been bolder on officially ending support of old versions but you still must deal with the past couple versions, workarounds, and hunting down mystery issues. It has been that way from the beginning and continues. If a client calls with a website issue, nine times out of ten it is in IE – even when reliable content management systems are utilized. And yes, IE keeps you from working on the latest and greatest in HTML and CSS if you want your site to display reasonably for the masses and you don’t mind the time and energy devoted to building dumbed-down versions of progressive sites for the IE enthusiasts.
For me the pain and impact of their arrogance started early on in the mid 90’s when we only had 256 colors to work with – no wait – Microsoft decided we only needed about 245. It was more important for them to display their logo in Microsoft colors so they took colors away. Other corporations, and the presentation of their colors and imagery, be damned!
In the mid 90’s through the early 00’s they spread their version of joy and merriment throughout the design community by marketing Front Page, and Office, as the every-person’s design tools: who needs professional designers? Microsoft will forever be known as being responsible for more schlock on the web that any corporation in history. (How many “Abobe Killers” have they released over the years in an attempt to dig out of that hole?) And they created the browser wars by insisting the world should submit to the Microsoft way of life and let them define the standards. But thank you for that. The plan pretty much back fired and in the long-run I got a lot of work as folks realized their sites weren’t that great and every-person couldn’t design or think through a website build.
Where are we today? Still in a world where your pain is caused by IE. As a designer you either become complacent or continue to let Microsoft know things could be better; shut up or talk about the issues. No, it’s not yet time to stop blaming IE. I will stop when it is possible to build a fully functional site, as I promise to clients, and not have to include work-arounds or spend extra time to make what follows standards and simply works in other browsers work in IE. As a designer, either you build in IE issue dollars or bite the bullet and work for free to resolve them. I wish statistics were kept keeping tally of hours spent and dollars devoted to dealing with IE. I believe they would be staggering.
Justin
July 13th, 2012 3:52 pmI think car analogies always work (except when they don’t), so let’s compare this to Firestone tires of 2000.
Yes the tires looked like good tires, and they were from arguably one of (if not the) biggest tire manufacturers in the world…so people trusted that name to be a good reliable product that would not only do the job intended for them, it would do it well. Obviously this was not the case as they would up and explode. Did we blame the owners for buying these tires though? No. We blame the manufacturer for taking shortcuts in the manufacturing and not testing the product fully and releasing a sh!tty product into the market that ultimately could do a ton of harm.
While people aren’t dying bc of IE (although plenty of developers have wanted to kill people over it), it still is a product put out by a company with more than enough resources to develop a great product, that chooses to skimp on development and just rely on their name recognition and marketshare to inundate users who don’t know better with a half-ass product.
The argument that there are plenty of ways to make a site work in IE is also flawed, bc most of us aren’t building websites for fun with unlimited time and budgets. We are building websites for companies that want functionality x,y,z and for it to look modern and have certain bells and whistles…all for a set price and we as developers are expected to build this site within these time and budgetary constraints. Thus we have to hold back features (clients don’t understand and don’t want to hear about ‘this feature will only work in Chrome, Safari and Firefox and we have this nice static fallback option in IE’), and the organic growth of web development on corporate websites really slows down…thus Microsoft and IE ARE holding back the growth of the web, and they CAN be blamed.
Yes the bitching sucks, but if developers just stay quiet about this, how can we hope or expect change? Personally my biggest complaint is that we (developers) have been complaining about IE not following standards and not keeping up with the competition since IE7/8 and Microsoft has literally spent years ignoring us. They consistently give the development community a virtual middle finger and don’t appear to be changing anytime soon.
Andre Morgan
July 13th, 2012 3:52 pmAnyone cheering for ie websites must look poor in graphics and features.
Ryan Wagner
July 13th, 2012 4:57 pmagreed!!!
Ryan Wagner
July 13th, 2012 4:51 pmIE is the worst browser ever!! Microsoft is always releasing cramp that does not work. They are a monopoly company so they want to make the web their way and not CSS and HTML standards like other WORKING browsers. Hopefully that will change one day because there are a lot of people switching to Apple products and the number of PC purchases is dropping. Go MAC and any other browser except IE!
Universal XS
July 13th, 2012 4:59 pmYes, IE9 is a whole lot better than IE8, which was better than IE7, which was loads better than IE6. Still, IE9 is not a good browser. It lacks good CSS3 support and it will never have it.
Where other browsers release version 11.0, 11.2 and 11.5 (Opera) or release 3 versions in 6 months (Firefox, Chrome), IE only gets an update every once a year or even less, so they will ALWAYS be behind in CSS/HTML support. On top of that, IE9 does not work on Windows XP, which unfortunately is still used a lot. IE10 will have better CSS support, but will only be available for Windows 8.
So yes, encouraging people to switch to a browser is still a good idea.
alejandro
July 13th, 2012 5:10 pm10 times a charm!? I highly doubt it.
Every time I meet with a client I ask them what browser they use….and that’s my standard for that project.
Do I explain progressive design, YES.
Do I try to make the site work in old crappy browsers, YES.
Do I charge extra if the client is adamant about something looking a certain way in an ancient browser and it’s not a quick fix, YES. (I also let them know before hand, “If you want you site to work in X browser, it will be this much more.” – I do have my price standards, and it correlates with browser versions.)
Do I tell clients that are using IE to jump to another browser, EVERY DAY.
To not complain is to not have progress, to bitch about it and not attempt to do your best job for older browser is a poor developer.
Bottom line, every situation is different, do what’s best for your end client not the end user. If your client cares about that 6.6%, then you have to care too.
Ron Buesser
July 13th, 2012 5:11 pmThose of use who have been dealing with cross browser issues for a couple of decades now have encountered every imaginable variation of this argument. Remember IE4 versus Netscape 4? This solidified for years and people adapted to create very elegant designs and experiences.
If it were easy to build a single code-base to support IE7, IE8, IE9, Firefox 3.6 and beyond, Safari 4 and beyond, Chrome, Opera, iOS tablets, Android tablets, Kindle and Nook, then we wouldn’t even be having this debate. The reality is it just takes hard work, and last time I looked there was no Hard Work jQuery plugin out there.
One thing I rarely hear in these technical debates in the methodological/architectural concepts of Audience and Platform Analysis. Do I really need to support every broken version of Opera? IE6? Blackberry 8850? Depends on who your audience is and what their needs are. For instance when I architected Hertz’s mobile site several years back, I sure had to take Blackberry into account – ( eg. Corporate Car Rentals ). It was terrible and painful. Have a problem with IE? Try Blackberry’s internal browser. Do I really need to support IE6? Only if stubborn, corporate managers and illegal Chinese Windows bootlegs are my target audience. If not, then IE6 users can twist in the wind. Common sense ROI must replace religious stridency in these arguments.
The reason HTML Boilerplate is now usable is because they discontinued some of the IE6 insanity. How long are people going to continue to include those pathetic curvy corners and PNG transparency scripts which kill the DOM. The reality is if you take a moderate and reasonable stance, relying on graceful degradation, you can support 99.9% of your real users. The development cost to cover that last .01% is probably double your entire budget. Revenue projections will determine if that effort is worth it. That said however, IE6 accommodations will surely tank your mobile web app performance, so destroying the 99.9% experience needs to also be factored in as well.
Even leaving IE6 behind though, IE7, IE8, and IE9 still must be accounted for in any commercial software. CSS3 transitions and animations replacing certain javascript would be wonderful indeed. I am all for progressive enhancement, but the interaction design is not an ancillary consideration, it is the core functionality of the product, and no level of graceful degradation will account for that. IE7, IE8, IE9 and other Microsoft abominations will pervade the web for years to come. Deal with it! If you can’t, someone else will, and be paid well for their efforts.
Stop complaining about the wind.
Cody
July 13th, 2012 5:27 pmMany other industries have same problem but move forward. Take the music industry. When was the last time a band released they’re latest hits on a cassette. We got better equipment that has better technology so we don’t make cassettes anymore.
Technology is so far advanced than ie6 that we must stop always catering to those that want to use it. We need to teach them that old technology will not be supported.
It is time for us as technologists to share with users to upgrade or we will not support them.
DaveinMidwest
July 13th, 2012 5:55 pmSame circus, same clowns.
Dave Clements
July 13th, 2012 5:56 pmI somewhat agree with Nick, but the argument that they rebuilt the browser from scratch isn’t much of an argument. Chrome was built from the ground up just a couple of years ago and continues to surpass IE in functionality. That’s an excuse. They’ve been harbouring bad habits for years, and are slow to move forward, which is killing the web. Most people choose IE out of ignorance rather than choice, so they’ve got a responsibility to make it a decent experience for designer and user alike.
Jarvklo
July 13th, 2012 6:25 pmDropping *any* version of IE or not is a complete non-issue for me personally.
For me, browser support is simply a byproduct of the prtocess of making my client’s target groups happy with the sites I build!
I simply try to look at the cold, hard, facts of my client’s statistics and go from there whenever possible.
If “there be dragons” in the browser fallout in recent statistics, you handle those browsers.
Period.
If not I *know* I can safely ignore “legacy browsers” and “step up” the feature set I choose to use a notch or two.
Old browsers *always* go away eventually – and people will eventually stop using them.
Until then, I’ll continue to build for the “edge” and provide fallbacks to “the legacy” as I have always done – no matter how much I pray, wish and hope for reality to be different !
It’s IMHO That simple.
Sergio
July 13th, 2012 7:16 pmIt is because of people like this guy that web developers are unable to create engaging and beautiful expriences for users. You can’t waste too much time developing good things because later on your will have to test if they even work on Internet Explorer.
It is NOT or job to support old Internet Explorer versions, to the hell with people who just refuses to update their browsers or try others. I would say the web developer cummunity: STOP supporting and testing your sites on Internet Explorer just develop by following the W3C guidelines and those of us who have a good browser who abide by the standars will enjoy the content. To hell with the rest of the stupid people who are using Internet Explorer.
saurabh
July 13th, 2012 7:39 pmBrilliant. Thank you for this article.
Li77lemowgli
July 13th, 2012 8:12 pmAmen! I totally agree.
This is a part of our everyday job to deliver a product to the largest audience possible. Users don’t have “just to update their browser”. It is not how the web is working.
We totally can moan, in response, to those front-end developers who use -webkit-vendors only when the other browsers can do the same with their own vendors.
Please, community, don’t raise a new “this site is optimised for” area. Because this kinda war on IE is so bad, but we can use those fancy Webkit only properties, is what we are leading on with that kinda mindset.
The web belongs to everybody: it’s our job to render it so.
Fringe of memory
July 14th, 2012 9:19 pmQuote: “The web belongs to everybody…”
… and because of this, nobody has the right to damage the whole enviroment holding back the web for the sake of backward compatibility with obsolete browsers
Steve Stevens
July 13th, 2012 9:53 pmMotivational thought: the web is a public democracy and everyone’s vote counts. It is our job to watch and respond to the audience. Since May, globally, there are more Chrome users than IE. A year ago it was about 45% IE and 20% Chrome.
Ivo
July 13th, 2012 11:33 pmThere is only one standard to follow: your customer/public. If over 50% of your customers use IE, then thou shall develop first for IE…!
Nick
July 14th, 2012 1:01 amI do focus on the good part of my job – progressive creative application design and beautiful user interface design.
AND DON’T TELL ME I / WE CAN’T CHANGE THIS because a lot of us are getting sick of corporations holding back human and spiritual and creative evolution.
Why can’t we have a WiiPlayBox?? Why does my iPhone have proprietary screws in it that a mini phillips can’t open? Why do light bulbs burnout so fast? Why do I have to replace my entire motherboard to upgrade a chip? The reason always boils down to money and greed. We never think forward or long term because we’re always trying to screw each other over short term to make a buck of artificial debt currency which in this day an age has no value left to it anyway.
I’m sick of this nonsense and don’t tell me I’m negative for being a dreamer. How can progress ever be a bad thing?
Adam
July 14th, 2012 2:27 amCompliant browsers = less problem solving = a less technical field = less money = still complaining.
Jon
July 14th, 2012 5:03 am“Albert Einstein issued one of my most favorite quotes, in the history of the spoken word! In the middle of opportunity…in the middle of difficulty…lies opporTUNITY! My name is Phil Davison, and I will not apologize for my tone tonight!” My fellow web developers, IE is our opportunity. lol
Tiago Donatti
July 14th, 2012 7:16 amWould be great to ear someone from IE developer team about all this.
What they think about their browser holding back the web? What we can expect from the IE10?
SmashingMag fantastic people, please make it happens! :}
Ryan
July 14th, 2012 12:57 pm“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.”
Couldn’t agree more. Great article – nice to see someone standing up for Internet Explorer.
Himanshu Gupta
July 14th, 2012 2:14 pmMostly Indian government website is only run in IE…neither in Chrome…nor Mozilla…and these are most viewed website in India.
Their preferred lined in bottom is -> Best viewed in IE 6 and above <-
Vic
July 14th, 2012 5:56 pmThe author is not a programmer. He is a speaker, bla and bla.
And he has an opinion on programming. That’s nice, that you for sharing.
Now I have to go back to programming.
Phil Barnes
July 15th, 2012 12:57 amGreat post and I share your thoughts. Its part of our job, lets get on with it. For far to long (I draw experience from a recent portal project I was on) we have complained that IE sucked, and while yeah its not a modern browser. In my space mostly Gov clients, these agencies have a lot of internal tech (HR, Job Tracking/Issue Management, etc etc) that is specifically written to run on IEX. So while a new browser comes out that is better, it can take years for the funding to catch up to re-write or procure new apps to take advantage of the modern way.
Cir
July 15th, 2012 2:56 amWell, here’s the truth about IE6-8. It costs money! As a freelancer that works mainly with SME’s, these old browsers cost me time thus money. I’m tired of annoying bugs, hacks, conditional comments, html5shims, polyfills, proprietary filters…and the list goes on. I decided to drop IE6-7 a couple years ago by just redirecting users to one of the many sites that provide different upgrade options, and I haven’t got any complaints so far. Most clients and users don’t understand technology like us geeks, but they do understand that technology gets old, and if they see these messages often enough on the web, they’ll eventually find a way to upgrade. Although I still support IE8, let’s be honest, it’s an old slow browser that needs retirement soon.
It’s not a secret that most people using old browsers are either not very technology savvy or stuck in last-century work environments. The excuse of IT departments in fortune 500s not upgrading is just dumb. These companies have a product or service, and their job is to make that product or service sustainable yet able to evolve in today’s marketplace. I personally have some experience working at places where computers are just work-stations with the only purpose of “gettin’ shit done” and trying to surf the web in a modern fashion on these computers is a challenging experience. Fortunately we have Chrome Frame to fix this problem so there’s no reason for IT departments not to install it along with their predefined unattended Windows installations; it’s an easy task that won’t take more than a month for these huge companies if done efficiently. The real and honest answer on why they don’t do it is control, not time, not money, control.
About IE9 and future Microsoft browsers, I predict we’ll have the same problem yet again. This situation could be easily improved if Microsoft decided to opensource IE letting the community decide what’s important. I believe this is one of the main reasons why competitors like Google or Mozilla are able to keep their browsers up to date with the latest and greatest. Microsoft’s long term support policy is not compatible with browsers, it just doesn’t work. They need to make updates seamless, not just part of system upgrades with Windows Update.
Just my 2c.
Felix
July 15th, 2012 7:26 pmMaybe you have simply choosen the wrong profession. If there is no problem to solve then every dummy could do this job.
In the ancient times when ie6 was new there was the idea that the owner of a computer really is the owner and decides by himself if he want to update or change anything on _his_ computer.
I trust your words when you say that no one is complaining about your stratgy to redirect users of old browsers to a download page for new browser. In former times the same game was played in favour of ie or netscape. I always left websites immediately with such crazy ideas which look like provided from amateurs.
The really important websites simply dont use functionality which is not available in all browsers which are in use. It is difficult to make something simple. This is the challenge. The work around of special behaviour of the different versions of IE should be evident in the brain of every experienced webprogrammer and should be no problem.
Renaud
July 16th, 2012 9:07 pm“Maybe you have simply choosen the wrong profession. If there is no problem to solve then every dummy could do this job.”
If building websites involved nothing more than finding ways around IE’s flaws, that is …
The job of a developer (web or not) can essentially be summarized as conceiving and implementing technical solutions to fulfill a need. This requires conceptual skills, theoretical and technical knowledge (preferably extensive), practical experience, often enough a more than superficial knowledge of the target field, possibly graphic and interface design skills, communication skills, managerial skills …
Dealing with bugs and flaws in someone’s else product is not a primary purpose of a developer. Furthermore, if doing so becomes an impediment to what the primary purpose of a developer *is* or worse, an impediment to efficient implementations, exploring other options may be a good idea.
Until such a time ‘every dummy’ acquires those skills, learns HTML/CSS/SQL/javascript/php/whatever, developers will have plenty of work to do whether or not flawed products like IE even exists.
Cir
July 17th, 2012 2:50 am-”Maybe you have simply choosen the wrong profession. If there is no problem to solve then every dummy could do this job.”
That’s just non-sense trolling.
-”In former times the same game was played in favour of ie or netscape. I always left websites immediately with such crazy ideas which look like provided from amateurs.”
You got it all wrong. It’s not about favoring one browser over another; it’s about gradually deprecating old browsers so they can eventually disappear and we can move on.
-”The really important websites simply dont use functionality which is not available in all browsers which are in use.”
This is of course not true. Have you heard of progressive enhancement? Quoting from Wikipedia:
“In Progressive Enhancement … a basic markup document is created, geared towards the lowest common denominator of browser software functionality, and then the designer adds in functionality or enhancements to the presentation and behavior of the page, using modern technologies …”
Abdulhamid Alattar
July 15th, 2012 7:48 amIt’s not easy part to tell the users not to use something they found by default in there machines and they are used to it.
I think IE9 is a very good start and it will eliminate the old IE browsers with time, but till that time comes designers should try to make their work compatible regardless.
Paul
July 15th, 2012 1:50 pmWhat a load of rubbish. If we were all happy to have the web look as dull as http://www.nczonline.net/ then your argument might be fine. However as a designer I can’t get excited about that and its not something I can sell to my clients either.
People complain about IE because it costs them (a lot) of time and money to hack it into performing somewhere close to modern browsers. OK IE 9 is much better but just highlights how terrible its predecessors were. I don’t see why we should stop complaining about it since it still falls short.
“What makes the Web beautiful is precisely that there are multiple browsers”. This might be fantastic for you who makes money from theoretical talks on progressive enhancement (I’d love you to spend some time selling this concept to some of my clients and see how long they tolerate you talking before their eyes glaze over). For the rest of us its a complete pain with hours/days of lost time on each project trying to patch things up to work somewhat consistently in different environments.
Erkan Yilmaz
July 15th, 2012 9:33 pmThe Never Ending Story!!! (again!!!!)
I think everone said enough … let’s wait till IE99. Perhaps those discussions will end against that time!!!
Let’s use Opera, Firefox or Chrome … MS shall follow … as always!!!
Benny
July 15th, 2012 10:09 pmDesigners should design for the device; for the browser; for the platform; for the framework; to the specifications of the medium which the design is accessed. Hating on Internet Explorer doesn’t change the fact that Website X’s audience is 45% IE users, for example. It’s our job to make things more usable and more accessible, and present products in a way that makes their use more satisfying — sometimes that means delivering custom solutions for a medium we may not enjoy delivering solutions for (i.e. IE). What’s important to remember is that design is about the user, not the designer — we create experiences for people, not the mediums that host them.
eeeejay
July 16th, 2012 1:45 amI think all the trouble is coming from Microsoft’s IE upgrading/windows sales strategy. On the early days of internet, since the .com bubble days, they used to update their infamous browser ONLY when they upgrade their OS, as it was their OS ultra-killer-feature.
Let’s see: IE6 in XP. IE7 and 8 in Vista and IE9 in Windows 7. Now, IE10 in Windows 8. So, I’ll establish some common ground here: IE IS NOT FREE. IT SEEMS TO BE FREE. It comes with the OS. It is PART of it. IF you have Windows, you can have it. If not, try your luck with some Wine port or any virtual machine. Portable or not, they need part of the RIGHT Windows environment to run. And Windows is not free nor open sourced.
IE is part of their main product: WINDOWS. And it is their hot beer model. It’s used to lure potential 3rd-party users to BUY Windows, promising a better web experience. Sounds familiar? One of their promisses since XPs. And IE is a part of a whole sales model. Never wondered why you could not have more than one IE installed? Just because it is MELTED into the very core of the OS. Take it off and BAM!, OS starts to glitch. Put 2 of then together in the same machine and voi-la! 2 semi-useful browsers! Too much for pixel-perfect web dev. That’s their business model guiding their programatic ways!!! Monetizing above developers. Just that. I love competition because it is forcing them to rethink this flawed strategy. Detaching web browsing apps from the very core of M$ OSes will significantly increase their developing speed. I would love to see IE paired with their competitors. Yes, they’re capable of doing awesome apps. But I still doubt if they are ready to abandon their actual business model to something more competitive.
Said that, I strongly disagree with this article. M$ can do better. Market is pressing it to do better. But I believe that many (almost al) things presented on this page (and comments) are collaterals of their misleading sales model, not by their “programming laziness”. Question is: why resist? Why not adapt and let evolving happen? Release us from those petty constrains! M$ can be awesome too! Release the IE (i could not resist :D) )
Josh Smellie
July 16th, 2012 7:20 am“Supporting” Internet Explorer is not the same as “making your browser look the same” on Internet Explorer.
I will always give out the option to support older browsers, when I can and it won’t cost me too much time and effort to do so. Why? Because it’s common courtesy. Just because I know what is an outdated browser and what isn’t doesn’t mean my viewers do, and why should they? That’s not their primary purpose for visiting most websites (obviously excluding websites related to this very issue). There’s also no reason you cannot attempt to educate your viewers (with older browsers) on the benefits of upgrading.
But the thing people don’t seem to think about is that you can support older browsers without making your website look like a carbon-copy on all browsers. I will design your website so that it’s functional and user-friendly on an older browser like IE6, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to use complex hacks and coding to make the it look exactly as it does in the latest versions of Firefox or Chrome.
A good practice would be to develop your websites how you want to, and how your client has specified (if they have). If you or the client then wants IE6 support then you can then add it after, but make mention to any prospective clients that this will cost more, because you’ll be essentially redesigning the website to work on an older browser (and despite what this articles author may think this -does- take time; -a lot- of time).
Phebs
July 16th, 2012 10:41 amReally?! Did u get a paycheck from the guys at Redmond for this article? Do u even know wht a css means? Have u developed any website at all? I bet anything u dont.. so stfu. Now I feel sorry for Yahoo (aol) :/ imagine all their “front-end devs” having similar mindsets like yours. There r a lot of things money really cannot buy :)
Andy
July 16th, 2012 11:15 amThe attitude of “users should just upgrade their browsers” is, frankly, elitist and exclusionary.
I don’t work in the design end of web development, but rather in web based document management systems, mostly for corporates and government organisations. For these groups “just upgrade your browser” isn’t some trivial thing. Some of our customers are still on IE6 precisely because upgrading 10,000 machines isn’t trivial – and they understand that still being on IE6 is a problem. The thing is, it’s one of 99 problems they have.
Worse, there’s also the level of user capability. As developers, we are familiar with trying new software, and using lots of browsers. Many of the staff at our customers have never (knowingly) used a browser other than Internet Explorer, and changing that will cause some of them problems. I know, it’s incredible – but that’s the way it is. This is the same reason that some of them still use Office 2003(!) The change could cause organisational turmoil.
The idea that Microsoft can “force” users to upgrade like that using auto-update is laughable. They’d probably end up in court. No big corporate or government department is going to accept someone installing updates without their say-so. If you were Citibank, how would you react if you came in one morning to discover that Microsoft had upgraded all your browsers? What of any plug-ins you’d had written? What of your security policy? (Although, actually, banks tend to be pretty up to date)
If fact, I’ll bet good money that Microsoft themselves don’t want to support IE6, 7 or 8. But they have to cajole their customers, not act like autocratic dictators. That is, after all, a long standing complaint about Microsoft.
Now, all that said, I don’t like IE much. At home I use Safari, and I do like Chrome. I agree that IE holds back web development – but so do users. The constant – and, it seems, accelerating – software technologies generally risks leaving them behind.
The simple truth is, whatever browser gets used, you’re still going to look at having to support it for 5 years because companies and government don’t have the time, money, or business drive to update their browser every year. And that’s true for any browser. So keep pushing for better – but try to have a little compassion and understanding for those who can’t keep up.
Ben Kim
July 16th, 2012 5:43 pm“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.”
Couldn’t agree more! We’ve just started re-evaluating our target browsers and resolutions for our site and the IE6 debate has become a hot topic. I’m a huge supporter of progressive enhancement and I’ve never relied on the ‘this site is best viewed in browser ABC’, It shouldn’t matter how a user views (or interacts with) your site, you should always strive to provide the best UX possible. If you provide a positive and unique experience then everything else will fall into place.
Great article!
Jamezs Gladney
July 16th, 2012 10:14 pmThe thing with IE is it is not automatically updated and any version of it is exclusive to a specific operating system IE10 is coming now but instead of programing it so it works on Win7 and 8 they programmed it so it only works on Win8 when the platform works on Win7. So when everyone (mostly) is on win8 they will roll out a IE11 and say yay we are keeping with automatic updates, but in two years when Win9 comes out and they are rolling out IE12 it is only going to be on Win9.
So we are back fighting the browser again, but this whole time it has not been the browser, it has been the OPERATING SYSTEM! Microsoft is realizing this but fixing IE will only lose them profit. Yet it would be “the right thing to do” to make the Internet more secure, but the marketing point of “you get a more secure browser when you buy this $300 piece of software” is to alluring for the marketing team to give up.
The popularity of XP lead to the annoyance of IE6. The automatic update system needs to span operating systems, and until it does I am going to be rightly prejudiced against the browser, because developing for it will only be temporary. I prefer to design in chrome, spot check in Opera and Firefox and depending on how broken things are in IE8-6 I might fix somethings.
But like I said its the Operating systems fault not the browser, and MS would let it transcend version or operating system, its an “easy” thing to do all the competition has done it and Microsoft will profit due to it because no one will get another browser if they where not bombarded at a specific point that their browser was bad!
Tim Etler
July 16th, 2012 10:16 pmI think this is spot on. The web was designed to begin with based on the concept of accessibility. That means you should be able to visit your site on any browser. Even Linx. Even mosaic. You can’t predict what requirements the users of your site have. Maybe they need a special reader that doesn’t support javascript? If they’re blind they definitely wont see your fancy transitions.
Does this mean you need to bend over backwards to get old browsers to look the same? No. Does this mean you can’t use the cutting edge technologies? No.
It means you shouldn’t alienate any audience for any reason, because the web isn’t about a single browser, or feature set. It’s about connecting everyone, and that means even the most basic browser should have some kind of support.
Of course, practically this can’t always be done. Budget and time restraints still apply, so some times you need to just do the best you can with what you’ve got. That means supporting your largest audience first (and everyone has a different audience). After that, support the lowest common denominator. (This means hypertext and actions through http requests. Your website should be accessible by a text only browser). Then, if you want to do extra star filling in the gaps with progressive enhancements.
I think the trap many designers fall into is that they want their website to look exactly the same on every browser. You do not need to do this. It can look poor in some browsers, but, it does need to at least work. If in some browsers the text is slightly mis-aligned, that’s ok. Take a deep breath. Those users know they don’t have the newest browser, and they’re used to websites not looking perfect. You don’t need complete control over every UX. Just the most common one.
JohnC
July 18th, 2012 6:18 pmI agree entirely but there seems to be a shortage of adult professionals here.
Will
July 17th, 2012 8:07 amA little harsh on Louis considering he recommended your book as one of the top three books for Web app developers ( http://www.impressivewebs.com/books-web-app-developers/ ). IE9 is an improvement, yes, but it doesn’t mean that Microsoft couldn’t have gone further with it…
Travis
July 17th, 2012 3:03 pmDon’t be so dumb… Instead say “Thank you Microsoft!” and pray for confusion, chaos and fragmentation. The complexity of developing a good website is why we are valuable and well paid.
Imagine a world with perfect browser standards. Coding for the web is now sooo easy! In fact it is so easy that anyone with the newest version of Dreamweaver can pop out a flawless compliant website with no training at all. So now all the skills we developed over the years earn us maybe $10 bucks an hour. Think it through to it’s logical end. The easier the job becomes the less you are worth.
Get some historical perspective. Stone masons used to be highly respected extremely well paid craftsmen. Now a guy that “lays block” for a living can’t even pay his bills. The smartest thing to do is encourage fragmentation to the point that it is impossible to do anything online without us. Create so much chaos that we are seen by our clients as a cross between Gandalf and a Rocket Scientist and then increase our fees with a smile on our faces.
It worked for lawyers and accountants.
Jon
July 17th, 2012 4:43 pmThe author is way off the mark. Dealing with poor, out-of-date technology isn’t an enriching development experience – it gets in the way of them.
The fact that MS controls the OS yet still couldn’t make a modern browser work on XP, while Chrome and Firefox could, staggers me.
The IE project will be used as a cautionary tale to future students of tech, as a case study in how to dig a hole that took years to climb out of. It has damaged MS’s credibility with web developers, and rightly so.
Ariel
July 17th, 2012 5:33 pmI can´t believe what I´m reading… any webmaster on earth knows what IE really is – the only one browser that is not fully compatible with itself !
Doug C
July 17th, 2012 6:00 pmIE is the bain of every Web Developer’s existence. ‘Nuff said.
Aaron
July 17th, 2012 6:02 pmTotal sarcasm here… I love how “modern” websites restrict you from using their full on features UNLESS you are using Internet Explorer or Safari. Otherwise, in all other browsers it won’t work.
…cough, cough, Progressive.com. Yes, if you have them, you know what I’m talking about. Ridiculous.
And I don’t completely agree with this article. Microsoft continues to implement bad products and when they release something new it’s far behind. Why?
Ryan
July 17th, 2012 6:48 pmI do agree that having deprecated browsers does make us web developers’ jobs more challenging because we take the time to make the web experience work perfectly in every browser, then the red headed step child has to render it 3 pixels out of alignment. Most of the time I just use my little friend *hacky to solve the problem but sometimes this may require a completely new approach. Conditionals for IE stylesheets are a good work around but doesn’t completely solve the problem, sort of like electrical tape over the check engine light.
These old browsers ARE holding the web back, no question. There have been so many times during our think tank meetings when we are conceptualizing a web experience and someone says, “That feature would be really cool…oh wait it won’t work in IE.” So instead of supplying our users with a really great experience, we have to deprive them of it and provide a mediocre, less exciting experience. #NoKidLeftBehind
Erkan Yilmaz
July 17th, 2012 8:43 pmIf you want to use IE7-8, buy Windows XP.
If you want to use IE9, buy Windows Vista..
If you want to use IE9-10, buy Windows 7…
If you want to use IE10, buy Windows 8….
If you want to use IE10-11, buy Windows 9….
If you want to use IE11, buy Windows 10…..
Got it??? ;-)
JoeMoe
July 17th, 2012 10:53 pmI am going to have to disagree with the author on this one, to an extent. You see you are right that we should be creative to use progressive enhancement to use the new and cool HTML5 and CSS3 techniques. This should allow us to build for the old and outdated browsers and still build for the new feature rich browsers and give that cool experience. But this is why I think Louis is right in that the old browsers are holding us back and its something that was never mentioned. That one little thing is called a budget. To accomodate for all browsers within a budget we may have to strip out some of the cool things we want to add because it would require more work to add that functionality. Therefor, decreasing the user experience and thus being held back by old technology. Working at Yahoo you probably don’t experience this as much because the budget is much more then those of smaller businesses.
I would also like to further prove my point by saying, imagine if IE doesn’t exist anymore. Just imagine that Firefox and Chrome own 100% of the market share. Can you build a better experience for cheaper? If your answer is yes, then I believe Louis is right. Old browsers are holding back the web.
Kevin
July 17th, 2012 11:35 pmThis article misses the point. The browser is a poor product and we don’t need it. What we should do is break our sites for it.
MC
July 18th, 2012 11:58 amPeople! JUST stop doin’things for old browsers – that’s it…
Why blame old, crappy browsers or ppl who use them? Developers are the only reason old browser still exists – you ppl produce code which is running good on ie6, or even ie7,8. Stop doing that and tell your clients, to upgrade or change browser.
3 MONTHS – this is time when old browsers will disappear from desktops when ALL companies, agencies, freelancers and big corporations say NO, to old browsers…
Adam
July 18th, 2012 4:28 pmIE built its own reputation – no one just randomly thought, I’m going to hate on IE for no valid reason. YES – it is a web developers job to have a website gracefully degrade for older platforms if the desired target market uses them.
- IE deserves what it gets.
JohnC
July 18th, 2012 6:14 pmWow, we finally hear an adult message about this and the blowback is enormous. I see a lot of negative people I would never consider hiring for any professional work responding to what is a well reasoned and practical article as opposed to the original it’s rebutting.
Doug K
July 18th, 2012 7:15 pmI agree that IE9 is a huge step forward, but at this point, every time Microsoft releases a new version of IE, extra time is added to projects to work out bugs. This either costs the developer or the client, and I personally don’t appreciate that.
As far as I’m concerned, Microsoft should pay a third party and package a better browser with Windows. At what point is it unethical to keep on pushing products that are universally recognized as being subpar to their competitors?
Ballmer
July 19th, 2012 12:35 amAll IEs are expensive pieces of shit. Microsoft should have enough money to develop a normal browser, where is their proud? They have no nuts.
Jeff Seals
July 19th, 2012 5:24 pmI could not disagree more with this article. Microsoft’s dev team is compiled with some of the most stubborn leaders who just absolutely refuse to admit their faults and then fix them the right way.
carl-michael
July 19th, 2012 9:18 pmDude, If Peter Parker worked for Microsoft everything would be fine.
He knows, that with great power comes an even greater responsibility.
Yes, we can deal with IE, that is not the issue.
maybe if we camp outside the Redmond campus in tents for a month we can bring awareness to non-devs and designers out there.
That being said…I guess for now the responsibility of getting people to upgrade browsers is on us (the dev/des community). Use facebook twitter whatever just get the word out.
Aaron
July 19th, 2012 11:29 pmWorst audience ever … must’ve been the 6am talk. Great job Paul. I came in thinking MS must’ve paid you to get people to stop hating on IE. But I like the way you’re looking at it. You’ve changed at least one mind :)
Thanks
Abc
July 20th, 2012 12:01 pmNicholas C. Zakas, you aren’t a user, are you?
Wesley Terry
July 23rd, 2012 10:30 pmWhat is everyone going to do when IE is actually better than the other browsers out there? http://caniuse.com/css-grid They are already set to go on CSS Grids.
anardo
July 24th, 2012 6:26 amDead to IE!
Afton
July 24th, 2012 3:00 pmIE sucks, full stop.
Use Chrome.
Akshar
July 24th, 2012 3:01 pmNicholas Zakas is a Javascript developer whom I greatly admire and his books have helped me a lot to write maintainable and scalable Javascript code.
Most certainly, Internet Explorer happens to be one of the tight constraint in front end development. Whenever I developer web applications for group use. (Such as a classroom) I could dictate which browsers were to be used and it worked fine. Zakas’s advice of using progressive enhancement however has helped write better code which still works well in IE if not the exact same way as in Chrome of FF.
While it is true that IE is one of the worst browsers and we all would wish it death, I think a true engineer should always think like Zakas does. It is a just a constraint.
Marian Driscoll
July 24th, 2012 7:57 pmIE is holding the web back because it is a platform-dependent browser. That means designers/developers need to run Windows to see what they create. This annoys Linux and OS X designers and forces us to use VMs of Windows.
We don’t really have that problem with any other mainstream browser.