
Supporting IE Is Too Much Work - bartj3
http://bartvanzon.com/blog/2012/05/09/supporting-ie-is-too-much-work/
======
axefrog
I honestly think a lot of hacker types really do live in a bubble where they
think it's still 2000, Microsoft is still the same evil company they were,
Apple still can do no wrong, most people now use Macs "if they know what's
good for them", RoR, node.js and Python are really the only valid technologies
for back end development and so forth.

Certainly plenty of folks out there using the aforementioned technologies are
more worldly than my previous statement would suggest, but there are still an
irritating number of developers living in the past who haven't really got a
realistic view of the technology landscape as it exists today, in 2012.

I also notice this on various high profile podcasts that from time to time
downplay anything from Microsoft as having any value these days, despite not
really having had recent first hand experience of what's available.

I prefer Chrome myself, but supporting IE9 really isn't that hard, and
suggesting otherwise is FUD.

The landscape has changed in the last five years. Hopefully over time,
especially as the landscape continues to change, the antifanboys will realise
this and update their views.

~~~
dlikhten
This is a lot of FUD style arguments please let me elaborate:

a) Developing on windows is absolutely attrocious. If MS wants me to develop
on windows, PUT SOME FUCKING EFFORT INTO IT.

b) Developing for Chrome, I support ALL operating systems.

c) Developing for FF, I support ALL operating systems.

d) Developing for Opera, I support ALL operating systems.

e) Developing for Safari, I support OSX, Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8.

f) Anything webkit related is supporting the iPad AND Android Tablets, and
iPhone, and Android. Even without a special experience.

g) Developing for Mobile is an effort. Unfortunately. If you want a truly
mobile experience.

Let's talk about IE now:

IE 9 is only supported IN WINDOWS 7. That's right, no XP, an OS which every
other browser other than microsoft's support. So there.

If I allow IE users to use my site, I don't care if I make a giant "we don't
fucking support IE" banner, people will expect it to work. And I will be the
bad guy. If they visit my site and no IE support "please take 20 seconds to
install chrome". The business will dictate if those people not willing to
install chrome/chrome frame (no admin access required) are important enough to
support.

Now... ITS 20-fucking-12 and windows still has the biggest piece of absolute
shit terminal tool possible, with no alternative in sight. Furthermore
terminal programs that work in linux, work in mac, so you get REAL developer
tools. There is nothing decent like that on windows. Many things I need for my
program to run DOES NOT WORK IN WINDOWS, so it's on MS' head to make them
work. Apple saw that having a fully custom OS meant developer alienation. That
is why they made OSX. People immediately praised it for it's ability to run
dev tools, and developers were happy.

Now. Apple does evil. Apple is 2x as evil as MS ever was or will be. However
Apple currently innovates (or did). However I can't argue with the fact that
they have good fucking hardware. Developing on windows means piece of garbage
hardware, shitty laptops till maybe a few months ago, who still cant fucking
get touchpads right. YES TOUCHPADS SUCK ON WINDOWS STILL, 2012! On mac,
touchpads are pleasant. There I said it, Windows is a terrible operating
system from a user experience perspective, and that includes hardware.

So now why would I support IE? Look at my list up top. Please tell me what MS
does to make me want to support IE? What benefits I gain? I pretty much only
get users who don't know left from right mouse buttons, and unless I'm
facebook I probably don't care about them anyways.

Edit: I am in no way saying IE 9 is bad. In fact IE 9 has multi-process,
something I wish firefox implemented already. Performance is good enough for
most websites. And the W3C support is up to par with normal browsers, though
still a bit lagging.

~~~
axefrog
Your blinders are industrial grade.

Developing for Windows is in fact a pleasure. MS have more love for their
development community than you realise, and this is reflected in the tools and
technology they provide. .Net is incredible. Really.

> IE 9 is only supported IN WINDOWS 7

Supporting WebKit in iOS requires me to BUY AN IPAD just to test properly!
Supporting WebKit on Android requires me to buy an Android phone just to test
properly! Your argument is invalid.

> Now... ITS 20-fucking-12 and windows still has the biggest piece of absolute
> shit terminal tool possible

The actual console window annoys me, I'll grant you that, but only in terms of
fixed width and columns. PowerShell, the current standard shell for modern
Windows version is _really_ powerful. Get with the times.

> Developing on windows means piece of garbage hardware, shitty laptops till
> maybe a few months ago, who still cant fucking get touchpads right

Ummm... blame the manufacturers? Microsoft doesn't own Asus, Acer, HP, or any
of these other companies.

The topic is whether or not to support a particular major browser, not whether
you prefer Windows as a development environment or working with budget
hardware. I would suggest you step back from your frothing-at-the-mouth hatred
of Microsoft and determine how up-to-date, relevant and accurate your
information actually is.

~~~
decode
> PowerShell, the current standard shell for modern Windows version is really
> powerful. Get with the times.

Do you actually use PowerShell as an interactive console on a daily basis?
When I tried to learn it, it seemed powerful for scripting, but nearly
impossible to use interactively. I ended up using bash under cygwin, because
it seemed to be the best option available.

~~~
axefrog
Yeah I use it most days. I use Console2 though (open source console window
replacement), which removes some of the physical limitations I'd otherwise
have to put up with.

------
skrebbel
I really subscribe to the attitude in this post. We're developers, we're
supposed to make decent software. Our users won't care whether it's our fault
or somebody else's if the software doesn't work. Just like you don't go
blaming the database if your app becomes slow, you shouldn't blame the browser
for rendering your page wrong, _even if you're right_!

Dammit, we're grown ups here. Make decent software! Test it! Automate the
tests! Gracefully degrade! Yes, it's difficult, yes, it's costly! Get over it
already!

Either make a fancy web app that _works_ , or just make it highly non-fancy
(HN, anyone?) to avoid all the headache. Or go somewhere halfway, as long as
you're in control.

~~~
vbigham
Absolutely. IE still has tons of users in the world, and it seems a joke to
not invite them to the party. It doesn't really bother me as much if they
change the features per browser platform, but when you visit a site and it
browser sniffs and comes back with a blanket message "Browser not supported
please upgrade." that's when I know that the dev is a lazy piece of shit. They
don't even bother to try to let it degrade so that people can still access the
content, they just shut it off. Rediculous and immature is what this is, why
would you put effort into being such a hater especially when its your
customers that are being stopped?

I suggest that we windows users boycott the sites that simply block IE. If it
removes features I would skip it as well. Not supporting IE shows a lack of
commitment to your users. As a user, I object to such half-assed notions. Its
already bad enough with the entire dev community telling their users what they
must do and how they must act. There is really no reason to be blocking IE10
at this point (yes I've seen it and was shocked and amazed that the fool would
actually do that).

------
gaius
I think a general problem with "webdevs" is they have "year zero" mentality -
anything prior to the release of their favourite framework, didn't really
exist, and if they do acknowledge its existence, it's only to observe how
worthless it is. It's almost religious in nature. You see this in particular
in the Ruby world where they are forever reinventing the wheel, but it's
certainly not limited to them.

IE6, because I am old, and remember, was the first browser that you could
build real applications with desktop feel in (e.g. Outlook Web Access). Lots
of in-house developers jumped on it, and wrote millions of lines of code. You
might think it's too much work to support IE6; _they_ think it's too much work
with too little reward to rewrite everything in whatever's trendy this week,
because it basically does what their users need and they have real, actual
work to do.

~~~
valuegram
>> anything prior to the release of their favourite framework, didn't really
exist, and if they do acknowledge its existence, it's only to observe how
worthless it is. It's almost religious in nature.

For me at least, its not about religion but economics. Writing standards
compliant code that works in all modern browsers costs a certain amount.
Writing standard compliant code that is also backwards compatible with older
technologies and legacy browsers may cost significantly more. The cost is one
issue, of course the larger program is the value. Legacy browsers like IE6&7
compose slightly over 3% of the market share last month. Without even getting
into the demographics of those people, it often isn't worth it to tweak for
those specific cases.

That being said, I always leave it up to the customer. This is the issue in
the browsers, here is your traffic effected, this is what it would cost to
fix.

I can see the agitation with IE6&7, but the newer releases have gotten much
better. For the most part, something I develop mainly in FireFox works fine in
the newer IE releases.

------
ivanbernat
It's time we separate "full-stack" developers from "front-end" and "back-end"
guys / gals. I've met some brilliant folks who write amazing Ruby but say they
hate CSS or JS. Those are "back-end" guys. A "front-end" person will write CSS
and HTML markup without a problem and will always make sure it's cross-browser
compatible.

I've been coding front-end markup for 7 years now and I've never come across a
IE-specific issue that took longer than 5 minutes to resolve, and 99% of the
time my markup worked without any "hacks" at all. I'm talking about ~450
projects.

So my advice to all the startups calling "not supporting IE a feature" to
outsource their markup to a company that will do it right. Remember, 90% of
the world ISN'T using a Mac or a *nix flavor (I'm personally on a Mac) and
many of them have no idea they can choose a different browser. Saying NO to
someone just because they use a browser you don't like is like going around
and bashing people based on their sexual preferences or religious beliefs.
F-it, I'm still on Firefox, which is now far behind Chrome, will you ban me
access in a year?

I keep telling startups, EDUCATE YOUR USERS. Put a banner and tell te to
upgrade to IE9 or install Chrome Portable if they don't have the required
permissions.

~~~
white_devil
> I've never come across a IE-specific issue that took longer than 5 minutes
> to resolve, and 99% of the time my markup worked without any "hacks" at all.

Now _that's_ a flat-out lie right there.

~~~
grabastic
Or it's the truth and his ~450 projects have been of low to medium css/js
complexity.

Or even high complexity and he got really, really, really lucky.

~~~
ivanbernat
I'd say 80% of all projects were done within 24hrs (standard delivery time)
while other projects were 40-page multy-style apps (mostly custom "CRM"
solutions). Heck, I even had requests do make the markup IE6-only.

~~~
ianstormtaylor
So in other words your apps mostly involved rendering text to a page and
letting form submissions edit the database. Which explains why IE support is
incredibly easy for you.

------
doc4t
Since so many are complaining about the difficulty of developing/debugging in
IE here is a couple of links that should make it easier for you

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar [http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=1835...](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=18359)

VPC Images for XP/IE6, Vista/IE7, Win7/IE8, Win7/IE9 - you can import the
images to VMware and VirtualBox [http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=1157...](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=11575)

MS Script Debugger and how to
<http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2004/10/26/247912.aspx>

Detecting Memory Leaks [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2007/11/29/tools-
for-dete...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2007/11/29/tools-for-
detecting-memory-leaks.aspx)

VS Express (free) [http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-
us/products/2010-ed...](http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-
us/products/2010-editions/express)

Firebug Lite <http://getfirebug.com/firebuglite>

I'm sure there are more some where...

~~~
NelsonMinar
Microsoft's virtual machine images work great in VirtualBox. It's a bit of a
PITA setting them up manually, but it's very easy with the installer shell
script at <https://github.com/xdissent/ievms#readme>

------
omgmog
It's not a lot of work to get a Windows/IE virtual environment up and running
on a Mac, I use Virtualbox daily in combination with
<https://github.com/xdissent/ievms>

This shell script automatically downloads Windows virtual machine images from
Microsoft, so that testing can be done in IE6/7/8/9. You don't even need to
use separate machines, if you get a Windows 7 virtual machine set up you can
use IE Tester to run IE5.5-9 <http://www.my-
debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage>

~~~
doc4t
It's actually much more work to test on a Mac when developing on a Windows
machine since Apple is so protective of OS X that they don't allow it to run
in a vm.

Which is sad because I like to have all kinds of users but it's really really
difficult to accommodate for all you guys browsing on a mac.

Please hit me with hints to make life easier for myself if you have some...

~~~
chao-
Agreed. Not a single person in my company (a whole five people) owns a Mac,
and it leaves us with no real options on the compatibility front. I prefer to
develop in Linux, but I have a Windows partition since it's easy enough to do.
But none of us have the pocket change lying around to buy a redundant machine
just to check up on some demonstrably minimal segment of our users who use
Safari on OS X.

I'll put in the time to boot into a Windows partition and double-check IE9,
but when it comes to OS X/Safari, I've got little recourse but to crossing my
fingers and bank on Safari's Webkit rendering being the same as (or close
enough to) Chrome in Windows and Chromium in Linux.

Safari DOES have a Windows version, but I've never seen it enter into the
conversation at all. Is it guaranteed to have true rendering/display parity
with the OS X variant?

~~~
doc4t
"Is it guaranteed to have true rendering/display parity with the OS X
variant?" No. Last time I made a hackintosh running Safari on Win and Mac
sometimes produced different outcomes in certain scenarios. Things might have
changed though.

------
5h
I work neck deep with cross browser "stuff" frequently, frankly, IE9 is a
breeze & imho Paydirt made themselves look really quite daft!

------
jacquesm
For the record, I hate IE with a passion. But look at it this way: If you
purposefully ignore a segment of the market you open yourself up to attack.
Better have that cost-benefit worked out, too much work probably isn't a good
excuse at any scale that matters. If you're just playing around then fine, go
for it. But if you're playing for keeps then be very careful with decisions
like these.

You'll be on your high horse over there telling people to upgrade or gtfo,
meanwhile I'll be over here making off with a very large chunk of your
potential userbase _and_ everybody they pull along.

That adds up, and if you're not careful it will add up to business failure.
Ignore your potential users at your peril.

------
frankiejr
It's sad to see otherwise talented developers focusing on the process more
than the product, and putting their craft above the user experience. After
all, _it's all about the users_. Doing good work and making excuses don't mix.

If you use any excuse not to test on any browsers in any Windows environments,
you're ignoring the fact that the vast majority of users are on the Windows
platform -- ~90% worldwide, ~81% in the US. I'm talking OS, not browser. (If
you think there's not much difference, try borrowing a Windows machine and
viewing the way most @font-face rendering works on that platform.)

And if you prescribe to the thought "my users are mostly on Mac," your growth
will be severely limited if you're ignoring 80-90% of the users out there.

Development & testing are two separate tasks. Don't confuse their respective
toolsets.

------
talmand
As a front-end developer who attempts to keep up with the latest and greatest
in my industry, I have to say that there does seem to be some sort of bubble
with people on their Macs. Too many times I've seen documentation that assumes
that everybody is on a Mac. Too many times I've seen demos that assumes that
everybody is on a Mac. Too many times that software that can easily be cross-
platform are not or they don't document it as such. Too many times I've seen
comments that say if you aren't developing on a Mac then they heavily imply
you're a loser.

Much of that also assumes that everyone has an iPhone or an iPad.

For instance, why is getting Phonegap up and running on a Windows machine such
a tragic pain in the ass? I got it going on my laptop to play with and after
that experience I'm considering putting "successfully installed Phonegap on a
Windows machine" on my resume and LinkedIn profile. I may be missing something
but even the Windows install documentation I've seen on their website is
several versions behind the current release.

As a counter, getting SASS running on my Windows machine was a breeze in
comparison.

Now, if it's software and you only want to develop it for OSX, that's cool.
But if it's a simple tool that can easily run cross-platform, then don't
pretend it doesn't.

It's like the complaints about webkit only prefixes on so much stuff on
Github, I'm willing to bet it's because of Mac people not caring about every
other browser/OS out there. That's a guess, nothing to back that up.

Most of the people who complain about developing for IE being difficult seem
to be Mac people and more than likely have no idea what they're talking about.
With my job I support gecko, webkit, and IE7+. Until recently that included
IE6. I do not use hacks unless I absolutely have to and I avoid using IE-only
style sheets. IT IS NOT THAT HARD!

If you think supporting modern versions of IE is too hard then you may need to
reconsider your workflow as it's probably the problem. It is your job to
support all the browsers your customers use despite your personal feelings on
the matter. Of course, if the browser use is below a certain percentage you're
comfortable with, then by all means go for it. I do.

I develop on a Windows machine because our platform is based on .Net. We have
two Macs in the office that two of our designers prefer. If need be I can ask
them to look at something for me. I personally do not develop for nor test for
Safari on OSX so I have no idea of all the differences and challenges of
developing for it. But I sure as hell don't say it's too hard to bother with.

~~~
fellowniusmonk
When you run your own site your job is to do whatever you want, however you
want, it's your chance to be opinionated and exclusionary, and as long as you
are not begging me to invest money, more power to you.

Also open source and sharing is more robust on linux and posix platforms, so
people naturally develop tools they can use on their own platform, with their
own workflow, and who cares if it gets ported to windows, I'm not creating a
product to sell, I am sharing my personal toolset in a friendly way.

Why are you complaining about the difficulty of installing a FREE opensource
project on a platform that is not native to the Devs? Of course it's more
difficult! Why are you complaining so loudly? Why are your expectation so
entitled? Did you even bother asking for help on Stackoverflow?

~~~
talmand
Simple, if it's an open source project that's a tool for web development and
the only barrier to making it cross-platform is rather insignificant, such as
vendor prefixes on CSS3 features as one example or even just proper
documentation, then I'm going to complain about it. As is my right as a member
of this open society we call the internet.

The devs always have the right to ignore me and I'm sure many will. I'm fine
with that.

If we're talking about a native app and the devs don't feel the need to port
it to another platform, then that's cool. Which is exactly what I said before,
but you skipped mentioning that. But if they say the thing works on Windows
and there's difficulty in getting it done, then there's a problem. If I have
to go searching through third-party websites to get their app working, then
there's a problem. If the documentation for the platform that they claim to
support is outdated, then there's a problem. I don't understand why it's so
bad for me to point this out. It's not like I'm saying that BBEdit doesn't
work on my Windows machine and therefore it's bad software.

I guess I only have the right to give criticism, constructive or otherwise, if
I paid for the software? Then maybe all those complaints from the linux
community aimed at Adobe for their lack of support of their platform should go
away? Personally, I think their complaints are perfectly valid. It's funny,
I've pointed out problems on other projects presented here and I was thanked
for it. But I guess the response varies.

Getting SASS working on my Windows machine did not seem as easy as it appears
to be on a Mac, simply because of the difference in environments. Even just
using it seems easier for some reason from what I've read. But you know what?
They gave instructions on how to get it done, they were relatively easy, and I
was up and running in a decent amount of time. That was a good experience, I
did not feel that the devs were limiting me based on my needs for a specific
development platform. Therefore, to me anyway, that is a good example of a
software project meant to help in web development.

But to be honest, I was not aware that I was complaining that loudly. Nor did
I realize I was coming across as entitled as I thought I made it quite clear I
do not think I am. Well, maybe I am about the complaining thing.

~~~
fellowniusmonk
Did you email them and ask? Or submit an issue via Github? Did you ask for
help on Stack Overflow? Once you found the fix for yourself did you submit a
pull request? Did you contribute? Maybe write a guide for others so they won't
have the flounder around in the same way you did? I never said you can't or in
some "moral" sense shouldn't complain, nor do you have to contribute, but as
cathartic as your post may have been, that is all it is, complaining for the
sake of complaining (feel free to try and shame or bitch about open source
projects all you want, but when that is the first and only thing you do,
you're being lame).

An attitude of entitlement, and posting in random off topic forums where you
are relying on the off chance someone from the project might stumble upon your
complaint just makes you a silly person.

~~~
talmand
I have to be honest here, you've been so adamant on your position I had to go
back and consider my original post to see if maybe I need to adjust my
thinking on some things.

So, my first thought was about the concept of people being in their own bubble
with the Mac community. It seems you had no comment whatsoever on that. I
guess you might have been referring to that in your comment about linux and
posix platforms. But if a demo is for a tool for web pages then it only makes
sense that it be compatible with browsers capable of doing the same as webkit.
It has nothing to do with OS.

Then I mention my negative experience with installing Phonegap on a Windows
computer. You don't specifically mention anything about my experience in your
response. I would have to say from my perspective the difficulties of getting
Phonegap working on Windows is rather well-known, it's nothing new.

Then I mention SASS and hint at my positive experience. You completely ignore
that.

Then I specifically state that I'm cool with someone developing an OSX only
app. You completely ignore that.

I again mention the webkit prefix deal on Github. Since Mozilla and Opera more
or less agree with me on that I feel no need to comment further.

Finally I speak of people complaining about developing for IE is hard and why
I think they're wrong. I end stating that I'm in a similar situation with
having to worry over Safari on OSX and I don't claim it's too hard to bother.
Again, you completely ignore this.

Your response to all that is that when I run my own site job I can be
opinionated and exclusionary. But I'm complaining about other people being
exclusionary and you find fault with it from me. Then you seem to claim I want
people to port their linux tools to windows for my benefit. I did no such
thing and actually stated the opposite. As for complaining about difficulties
of installing a free open source project, I still feel no issue with me doing
that as long as the project claims to support my OS of choice.

My response to you is to clarify that if someone makes a tool that could
easily be cross-platform and they choose not to then that's reason for
complaint. I also state the devs have the right to ignore me. Again your
ability to ignore my statements continue.

Again, I point out if devs don't want to port their native app to another
platform then I am totally fine with it. Again you ignore.

Then the do I have to pay to complain question. Also the linux community
complaining to Adobe which I agree with. Again you ignore.

I expand on my experience with SASS in a, I feel, highly positive manner.
Again you ignore.

Then you respond with a complaint that I'm not contributing, which seems to
make not much sense in relation to what I was talking about. Your attitude
seems to suggest that I have some strong misgivings against the open source
movement and that I am attributing some sort of indictment against the entire
community. As I pointed out, I did not. You say I claim entitlement, I don't
see that. You seem to be saying I was complaining about projects in the hopes
a dev would see them even though they are in an off topic thread. My original
post was on topic for the OP article since that's what I was commenting on.
You were the one to somehow turn this into me whining about, apparently, the
majority of the open source community.

I have to say, I completely disagree with almost every word you have written
about my comments. I'll just say we'll have to agree to disagree.

I also apologize for the wall of text.

~~~
fellowniusmonk
\----- Brass tacks:

Some guy coded/paid to release this opensource project on his own time, and
for free, you can easily copy it or change it in any way you see fit. His time
is his own, he paid it into this project without asking anything in return,
the second you start making complaints about him being lazy, or him not
spending his time how YOU want him to spend it, especially when you NEVER EVEN
TRY to contribute, you're acting like an asshole.

\----- Elaboration:

You seem to not understand this concept AT ALL. Let me give you an example.
This example is not perfect, because within it there is actually MORE room for
complaint, since the person in the story cannot contribute and fix the problem
the way he could in the phonegap situation.

Pretend you are homeless, but have a functioning car and get an allotment of
24 gallons of gas per day.

A private person drops off a plate of free sandwiches, they made these
sandwiches with their own time, using money they made from working in a coal
mine at their real job, and the food is from their own stock, which they paid
for. They put them out for all to eat for free in a heavily trafficked area
and go home exhausted at the end of a long coal mining day.

But you live on the other side of town. So you complain about the person being
lazy.

The person complaining is an asshole.

But! That person still has a more legitimate reasons to complain than you do,
you have been given all the ingredients, they are literally stacked on a table
right in front of you, there is one very easy (as you have said so many times)
solution before you eat the sandwich. When you pick it off of the table, you
have to turn it sideways before you can fit it in your mouth. You have
personally done this yourself and managed to eat your sandwich, and yet you
complain.

AND! Not only do you complain, but instead of very easily turning the table so
EVERYBODY else with a sideways mouth can easily eat sandwiches, you stand off
a few feet from the table eating your sandwich and shouting about how that
free sandwich guy is such a lazy asshole.

\----- Summation:

You can always complain, feel free to do so, some people complain when it
rains or when the sun shines. Just keep in mind that complaining in certain
circumstances makes you an asshole. This is one of them.

\----- Longer missive. (I didn't put any time into making this clear or
readable, readers beware):

You list all these things I am ignoring, I don't have to address every point
you make. Do you feel your are entitled to my addressing every little point
you make? By all means, complain about it, as clearly stated in my last post,
you are free to do so, and you show quite the appetite for it.

I am addressing a specific instance where entitlement was displayed
(coincidentally, your counterpoint about say "but, but, talk about how much I
liked Sass", is one where you didn't encounter a problem. Of course I wouldn't
expect you to demonstrate a sense of entitlement when stuff works.), and then
I listed some actions you could have taken that would determine if your
response to the hardship you faced was silly, that isn't changed based off of
your other experiences or peripheral issues, nor do I assume that your
attitude is perpetually silly and entitled, or that you are prone in all areas
to displaying an entitled attitude.

 _if someone makes a tool that could easily be cross-platform and they choose
not to then that's reason for complaint._

Seriously, do you even know how github works? If it is so easy to fix then
fork the project or submit the pull request your damn self. For an opensource
project, if it is ACTUALLY as easy to fix as you say, then complaining in this
fashion is like complaining that your mom forgot to put mustard on your
sandwich when you have a knife in hand and the jar of mustard is open in front
of you. Sure, complain all you want, you have every reason to do so, shout to
the heavens and whine, disparage your mother behind her back to the world at
large. But seriously, don't be a baby, just take the time to dip your knife in
the jar and spread some mustard, grow up.

Well (and this is said within the context of my prior post, and this specific
project, meaning, you are allowed to complain to your hearts content, knock
yourself out man) if it is as easy to fix as you espouse why haven't you
submitted the pull request on this free, opensource project? This ease of
"fixing" which you speak, combined with your lack of addressing it, combined
with your complaint, provides the perspective that makes your complaint silly.
In fact, the more valid your complaint (ease of fixing, etc.), the sillier
your complaint becomes (unless you have submitted the pull request and are now
complaining about inaction or something).

 _Your response to all that is that when I run my own site job I can be
opinionated and exclusionary. But I'm complaining about other people being
exclusionary and you find fault with it from me._

Either you didn't get the point I was making in the first place or you wrote
this part really poorly, please provide clarification of what you thought I
meant and why you used the word _BUT_ you seem to be indicating the second
sentence was dealing with the same point as the first sentence?

 _Then the do I have to pay to complain question. Also the linux community
complaining to Adobe which I agree with. Again you ignore._

My whole post was an answer to that question! Also, the second sentence is
just blame shifting "but but, look at what other people are doing! Address
that too!". Let me quote myself, which has already addressed my opinion on
both issues, if you had cared to read it:

 _I never said you can't or in some "moral" sense shouldn't complain, nor do
you have to contribute, but as cathartic as your post may have been, that is
all it is, complaining for the sake of complaining (feel free to try and shame
or bitch about open source projects all you want, but when that is the first
and only thing you do, you're being lame)._

Clearly in the context of contributing, this means I think the "best
practices" for complaint, and what makes a complaint lame or not-lame, is
different for open and closed source, due to a persons opportunity to
contribute.

I checked the pull requests on this project. Looks like for all the
complaining you speak about (I will take your word for it), including your
own, there isn't a single damn windows user who has actually submitted a pull
request to fix the issue, nor from what I can tell has anyone forked the
project and fixed it themselves. So it looks like this is a collective failure
on the part of all developers (who are complaining) currently developing
(using this project) in the Windows environment you mooching lamer (again,
only within the context of this project and those who have complained, I don't
know why I am writing a post this long, you clearly didn't read my last one
(which was much shorter), or are unable to comprehend). Cry, bitch, moan,
whine all you want, I am sure you can find the justification that this is
reasonable behavior somewhere in your own mind, but that is who you are if you
continue with this kind of behavior, and quite frankly I wouldn't want to
support a community with my opensource project, that created and I work on
using time that is COMPLETELY my own, when they complain without contributing.

Complain in your little corner all day long, I don't mind or care, I welcome
it, because it makes it easy to identify your freeloading lameness. Super
lame. When you have submitted the pull request to fix this "easy" problem you
keep kvetching about, then you will be less lame.

Complain to your heart content. The fact remains: Submit the Pull request,
otherwise, you are just an entitled leach complaining about an issue when you
could be supplying an easy fix (You said it was easy right?). That is my final
communication on this specific matter, if you want to continue the
conversation submit the pull request with the easy fix first.

~~~
talmand
Wow.

You got me, you're totally right. I point out issues, complain if you will, on
an open source project without contributing to it in any way has now made me a
lame moocher who is beyond contempt in your eyes because I somehow have a
problem with the entirety of the open source community.

So, I guess when I see a problem with an open source project done on a
platform I don't have access to or coded in a language that I do not know,
I'll just keep my mouth shut on the subject. Too bad that's the majority of
people who use open source software. I guess they all should be quiet as well.

If I see a problem that's easily fixable I'll start installing software, learn
Git, get an account on Github, learn the procedure of pull requests, learn the
terminology, and then hope I get everything right so that someone like you
won't call me lame. Scratch that, I'll go with your other suggestion and email
the devs directly.

I believe your tirade goes back to my original comment about people developing
in their bubbles. You are assuming quite a lot, your examples are not proper
comparisons; to me anyway. I'm also still confused on whether I can complain
or not, since on one hand I can but then you clearly state if I haven't done
A, B, or C then I should be quiet.

But, you got me, I'll go into my corner and be quiet since that's the only
thing I'm allowed to do in your worldview. My big corner with lots of people
who are apparently not welcome in your club, sorry I don't know the secret
handshake.

I apologize for insulting your community so much and causing so much
aggravation/anger in your life.

~~~
fellowniusmonk
Finally! A small glimmer of light at the end of a dark tunnel. Yes, emailing a
dev, give it a shot! Hell, in my first post I even just suggested posting your
question on StackOverflow (you do know what stackoverflow is right?), then if
it gets answered people can more easily google for assistance.

This new concept of thinking about how you can interact and contribute,
awesome! Cultivate that mentality instead of the learned helplessness stuff.

Keep going down the path of communication that isn't just cathartic, useless
complaining! You may actually learn something and be useful one day. I hope
that this is just your first step down the path of giving freely of yourself,
instead of ONLY complaining to yourself in a dark corner. There is no
difference to me if you sit in your corner quietly or do what you are doing
now, which is sitting in the corner and mumbling to yourself. There is
assistance you can provide, the moment you stop being a victim and pitch in is
the moment you can start to grow.

I'm not angry, and I don't think you insulted my community. You're just being
such a hilariously awful person, and come across like you feel helpless and
have nothing to offer, and I feel like I am Mr. Bennet and you are Mr.
Collins, I am quite diverted. :-)

Also, if you suck at programming and using tools as much as you seem to
indicate, you probably should add "installed phonegap" to your resume. :-D

Also.

Quit deflecting. I clearly distinguished my scope. Also, writing a guide
requires 0 installation of anything so your boned with that excuse (though I
am sure you have a nearly unlimited supply of excuses, the ignorant entitled
usually do).

My sandwich point still stands, do you think the complaining sandwich guy
isn't an asshole? By your response you seem to indicate you think he is in the
perfectly justified in his complaint.

I never said "YOU SHOULD BE QUITE", in fact I thanked you for it. I said that
given the circumstances, and given the way you are complaining, you're being
an asshole. If you want to be an asshole that is your prerogative.

My tirade is about your being in a bubble comment? Now I know you aren't
reading my posts. Since you didn't read my last post all the way through (hell
I even put wrote in a little easter egg to see if you had read it, which you
confirmed that you didn't), I am going to stop wasting my time on you, as
entertaining as I find you. Also, you can't be bothered to learn the tools you
are taking advantage of? Seriously? Are you still in highschool? That's one of
the excuses your going to use for mindless complaining? Ok, I get it now, you
aren't a coder and don't want to learn. Got it. In your current state you're
exactly the kind of person who has nothing to offer, you fail even at simple
error reporting. So the community doesn't/wouldn't feel any loss.

You have proven every one of my points better than I ever could. Good day.
Dismissed.

~~~
talmand
Again, you are assuming quite a lot. You're being quite rude.

You're a sad example for our community.

Thanks for dismissing class but I have to say I did not learn much from you,
great teacher that you are.

------
pudakai
First, I tend to agree that the Microsoft bashing is a little overdone.
They've been moving forward legacy code for a product that now is by far the
oldest browser in the field while at the same time having to support an
obviously enormous user base.

They've made their cost vs. timeliness vs. goodness decisions as is their
right to do so.

We make the same decisions about IE compatibility work. Being a very early
stage startup, we figure two things:

1) The field of IE users has a lower percentage (and perhaps absolute number)
of potential early adopters. For our app, this is a dead certainty, although
it is not necessarily so for other apps.

2) IE users, who aren't constantly comparing how a site looks in IE against
how it looks in other browsers, are accustomed to things being a little off
from time to time. This is their IE world.

So our acceptance level at this stage is does everything work and does it look
basically ok in IE. We don't sweat a lot of the finer stuff, again, figuring
most of the the IE users are in a world where things are off by a few pixels
here and there and don't get too upset by it.

If they did, they'd be on the other browsers, where the sun shines a little
brighter and the birds sing a little sweeter for all websites.

That is the important point to remember - browser type users are self-
selecting in their tolerance for UX hiccups.

------
JangoSteve
I agree with the point in general, but for one subtle detail:

 _What shocked me even more is the amount of comments saying that “supporting
IE is too much work”, not because it still costs the crazy amount of time it
used to (ie6), but because they’re developing on a Mac._

No, it's not that it's difficult on a Mac. It's that it's difficult on a [not
Windows]. Subtle difference, but undermines much of the "grow up" point of the
article. You're saying developers are whining because Microsoft doesn't
support their operating system of choice. But that's incorrect, they're
whining because MS doesn't support _anyone's_ operating system but their own.

And even if it was simply that you can't easily debug IE on a _Mac_ , the fact
of the matter is, all the other major browsers allow it. Who cares if it's
unreasonable to ask Microsoft to provide us a build for easy use and
debugging? Every other vendor (i.e. competitor) does it at the exact same
price point: $0. If IE lacks this "feature" at the same price point as the
competitors, then I say deciding not to support IE is fair game (though I
wouldn't personally exclude IE for anything other than a toy side project).

------
pwaring
As always, it depends on your audience. If 1% of your users have IE, then it
may well be too much work to support it - although 8/9 are a massive
improvement on 6/7.

On the other hand, if you're in my position and run a site where 100% of the
users have IE installed in a corporate environment (i.e. often an old
version), support is never 'too much work'.

------
nirvdrum
While I agree that supporting multiple browsers & devices is a PITA, we as an
industry are still employing some mindnumbingly bad testing practices. There
are a lot of solid testing products out there that ease the pain. Testing as a
service has made cross-browser testing simple and cheap the way hosted
services have for all sorts of other problems.

Obviously I have a real interest in this, given I'm a Selenium dev and I
started one of these testing as a service companies, but that really was a
result of wanting to ease the pain. I highly recommend checking out Sauce Labs
for functional testing and Mogotest (my aforementioned company) for render-
level testing. Both beat the crap out of running a bunch of VMs and manually
testing (although falling back to the VM to fix something may make sense).

------
acuozzo
Supporting IE isn't too much work. Trying to bend and twist WWW browsers to
render something other than formatted-text-and-images-with-limited-interaction
is too much work. You're bound to run into problems when treating document-
display programs as ``platform''s.

------
akmiller
One thing, many of these anti-IE articles seem to ignore is business outside
of the United States.

We are a global business and China's most popular browser (at least with users
hitting our site) seems to be Maxthon which is based on the Trident rendering
engine (which of course is what IE uses). This makes it nearly impossible for
us to ever consider cutting off IE support unless we wanted to neglect one of
our largest growing user-bases in the world.

Make sure you seriously consider which parts of the world your app could
potentially be used in and do the research to find out what browsers they use
in that area.

------
grampajoe
It doesn't matter whether you agree with a company's technical choices,
whether it's Paydirt, Microsoft, or anyone else. If you don't like their
choices, you're free to not use their software.

------
md8n
Thanks for your rant Bart and I'd largely have to agree. If you want pixel-
perfect equality between all browsers then supporting IE6 is truly a pain. Why
anyone would want pixel-perfect equality is beyond me though because the end-
users simply don't care. The real argument for the stuff I've worked on wasn't
IE vs. the rest, it was HTML4-ish (IE 6,7,8) vs HTML5 (IE9, FF, Chrome,
Safari, Opera). Even then using jQuery + Knockout on the client side solved
nearly every compatibility problem. There was also an actual advantage with
testing against older versions of IE as it enabled us to identify weird
performance and behavioural problems earlier. When we ignored a given problem
in IE6,7,8 during the development phase the same problem would turn up later
in all of the other browsers when the system was under load. Fixing the
problem for IE6,7,8 got us a massive jump on fixing the problem for all of the
other browsers. Personally for my own stuff the oldest version of IE I test
against now is 8. The massive number of XP/IE6 users still out there are in
China running a hacked version of XP. As I don't develop for the Chinese
market this isn't a problem.

------
jamespcole2
I generally don't bother supporting anything lower than IE8. If you want to
use my app and are using an old version of IE just download chrome, it's free,
otherwise don't use the app. I have used only Linux for about the last five
years but i do test in IE using VirtualBox and the free VHD's provided by
Microsoft(thanks guys).

I don't mind using the VM approach but the thing that annoys me is the massive
size of the VHD files. My Ubuntu install is only about 3GB but each windows VM
is around 16GB - 16GB!!! Considering I need a separate VM for every version of
IE I want to test and I am using 128GB SSD's in my laptop and Desktop most of
my disk space is taken up with having VM's to test IE.

That being said I think it's worth supporting newer versions of IE but I
always display a message to users recommending they get a better browser, I
think the more people we can get away from using IE the better because while
IE10 might be ok now i just don't trust MS ability to update it in the future
and i worry that in 10 years we'll all be bitching about IE10 the way we bitch
about IE6 now because millions of users will still be running out of date
browsers because of the poor update path for IE.

------
jan_g
>Testing in IE is too much works… because they’re on a Mac.

To be honest, lots of companies use similar excuses. We won't make/support our
product X on platform Z, because the user base is too small, we don't have the
hardware, developers are all on platform Y, etc.

And generally speaking (no reference to paydirt example) it is in fact true,
there are companies without a single windows machine. Unimaginable 5-10 years
ago, but reality today.

------
icodeforlove
I can understand not supporting anything <IE9 but it currently doesn't make
sense to target away from a browser that follows majority of the standards.
Microsoft has already said sorry for the shitty browsers in the past and they
have done a pretty good job with creating IE9 (minus the compatibility mode).
I find just as many bugs in Chrome/Safari/Firefox as i do in IE9.

------
giardini
IMO part of Microsoft's strategic view is that any developer time spent on
non-Microsoft technology is bad, so they saturate the developer with
Microsoft-specific requirements and deviations from otherwise well-established
standards.

Microsoft's proprietary software development products (Visual Studio, .NET,
etc.) present the developer with complex non-standard terminologies,
languages, categories and specifications unique to Microsoft tools and
platforms.

In the more open sphere of the WWW where Microsoft has at times dominated the
market, the same strategy applies: inundate web developers with deviations
from the standards and with Microsoft-specific "innovations". It works as long
as Microsoft has a large share of the market because you simply cannot ignore
their presence. In the end, much, if not most, of your time is used up
supporting Microsoft's idiosyncracies, leaving less time for alternatives.

------
S_A_P
I cant see how anyone could say it is too difficult to test windows on a mac.
Bootcamp serves exactly that purpose, and you can use windows on a nice piece
of hardware. IMHO, developers are payed a higher than average salary,
precisely because it _can_ be hard. If everyone could do it, there would be no
reason to pay more. Having built some web apps in my day, I get that its a
pain in the ass to support IE 6, 7 and to some degree 8. There may even be a
reasonable use case where not allowing a feature on a certain browser version
is reasonable. I didnt, however, see a compelling argument made by Paydirt to
that effect.

------
stutter
You don't have comments on your blog, so I'll comment here:

IE testing is "hard" on a Mac because of the vm requirement, yes. However,
that's not even my main issue. If Microsoft facilitated having VMs of each
windows installation + browser version available for that OS to developers,
it'd still be "hard" but at least they'd be helping. IE only runs on Windows,
so if you want to test for Windows you have a bunch of sub-par options, or
really expensive options, or..illegal options, pick your poison.

That's not even my biggest complaint about it, though. I have two main
complaints.

First, the development tools available to Internet Explorer are absolute butt
hole. Javascript is considered a second class citizen, and is nearly
impossible to debug efficiently. The amount of "oh lets try this for shits and
giggles" that is required, to see if it will fix a random IE issue is
absolutely astounding. I typically find my solutions to IE issues by complete
accident, and upon reflection say to myself "well..that's the most stupid
thing I could have thought of - so no wonder that works." Not simple, stupid.

It feels like Microsoft deliberately takes the stance of making it HARD to
develop software for Internet Explorer. I don't know if this is purposely
their philosophy but maybe they're diluted enough to think it helps turn out
higher quality applications. It doesn't, what it produces is a horrible user
experience designed for the lowest-common denominator. And the worst part
about it is that most of your end-users use IE. So, what it results in is
crappy, old feeling, slow web applications and an influx of user complaints
about things not working or taking too long (because the javascript engine is
about as slow as the Ruby interpreter).

Second, the IE user base is so incredibly fragmented across versions. And it's
not like the difference between chrome 13 and chrome 18 where some css3
features don't work, or websockets is slow, or whatever. The difference is
that entire feature sets are missing, or work differently. In one version CSS
box width includes margin and in the next, it doesn't. That's a pretty
significant change; it completely ruins the entire flow of your site and you
have to account for "special" cases of old browsers. Except, your "special
cases" of old browsers are 30% of the internet population.

Supporting IE is a time sink, but not just because it's "hard" to set up
Windows environments, but because Microsoft actively tries to make it hard for
developers to code, test, and debug applications in Internet Explorer. Or
doesn't make an effort to alleviate the pain; either way it's active effort in
creating more suck, imo.

Disclaimers: I've been developing on Mac for 4 years and haven't used Internet
Explorer as an every-day browser in 7 years. IE8 made some improvements to JS
debugging (SOME) and is vastly better than 6 and 7. IE9 might be amazing, and
IE10 might be the best browser in the world - I don't know. All I know is that
debugging IE takes almost as long as building the application did in the first
place. Until that problem is solved, IE will still suck and still get a lot of
hate from the development community. Microsoft has a giant mountain to climb
to get their reputation back to "neutral" in the web development community.

~~~
masklinn
> If Microsoft facilitated having VMs of each windows installation + browser
> version available for that OS to developers

Which they do, they've been offering complete VM images with various
combinations of Windows and IE for some time, the current offering is XP +
IE6, Vista + IE7, Win7 + IE8 and Win7 + IE9: [http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=1157...](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=11575)

While the images are for VirtualPC, I've yet to have any issue importing them
in VMWare or VirtualBox.

> IE8 made some improvements to JS debugging (SOME) and is vastly better than
> 6 and 7. IE9 might be amazing, and IE10 might be the best browser in the
> world - I don't know. All I know is that debugging IE takes almost as long
> as building the application did in the first place.

IE9's devtools are _significantly_ better than IE8's: more feature and much
more stability. They are nowhere near WDT/Firebug yet (or even Dragonfly), but
they are a huge improvement over the POS that IE8's devtools are.

~~~
stutter
> Which they do, they've been offering complete VM images with various
> combinations of Windows and IE for some time, the current offering is XP +
> IE6, Vista + IE7, Win7 + IE8 and Win7 + IE9

I've used the IEVMs project on github to install these VMs before; it failed.
I'm trying it again as we speak, maybe it's a viable solution, maybe not.

> IE9's devtools are significantly better than IE8's: more feature and much
> more stability. They are nowhere near WDT/Firebug yet (or even Dragonfly),
> but they are a huge improvement over the POS that IE8's devtools are.

Obviously the problem here is that IE9 represents 25% of the currently in-use
IE browsers and has (to quote rey bango,
[http://blog.reybango.com/2012/05/08/hey-paydirt-your-site-
wo...](http://blog.reybango.com/2012/05/08/hey-paydirt-your-site-works-just-
fine-in-ie/)) 35% world-wide Win7 marketshare, which as I saw somewhere (maybe
arstechnica) only has 50% marketshare. So you're looking at ~17.5% give or
take for other versions of windows running IE9, call it a conservative 25%
adoption for all IEs across the web.

TL:DR; IE9 has a ways to go before it's new amazing developer tools are valued
significantly. Until then, we're still stuck with IE6-8 ):

You make valid points; and the VMs available on their site should help testing
availability. It's too bad that the debugging is still second-class and
torture ):

~~~
jasonlotito
> I've used the IEVMs project on github to install these VMs before; it
> failed. I'm trying it again as we speak, maybe it's a viable solution, maybe
> not.

The official ones work. I'm actually installing the IE7 version as we speak,
IE8 and IE9 are running fine in VirtualBox.

------
ry0ohki
On that same note, if you don't have enough users to make IE worth supporting,
you better have a product targeted at techies, because it does not have wide
enough adoption yet among average people.

------
rglover
If I had to guess, I'd say that most of the complaints don't involve layout
issues but rather, support of newer features in HTML5 and CSS3. That being
said, there are plenty of (easy) fixes and workarounds that take care of most
problems. Is it frustrating? Yup. But like the article says, it just comes
with the territory. For newer front-end devs, I'd recommend dedicating a few
days familiarizing yourself with the various bugs, fixes, and tools for
testing. That alone will ease the pain. Just takes time like anything else.

Chin up, sport.

------
shazdeh
IE team should just be SACKED as a WHOLE and Microsoft should get in a new
Team. Surely by now everyone in the whole world knows that the IE team is the
worst shortsighted incompitent bunch of idiots that exists. Unless of course
the project manager is one of Bill Gates relatives. The posts the defend IE in
any shape or form, are either simply LYING or should join the existing IE
team. IE IS RUBBISH and if we all Stuck a banner NOT Supporting IE, the Web
WILL become a better place for everyone.

------
PeterisP
I can second that. Forget about IE - there are differences even for
Safari/MacOS and Safari/Windows, so if you are testing only on MacOS then you
aren't doing it well.

------
bwm
I think it depends on how far along you are in your product development
lifecycle. If you're at the MVP stage or you're making big changes to your
product regularly, then don't support IE, it'll slow iteration time in a
similar (although not to the same extent) way that launching with an iPhone
and Android app would. If you've got product market fit, paying users and have
the bandwidth to support it then you probably should.

------
RandallBrown
The web is a platform like any other. Supporting IE takes testing and
development time and more importantly SUPPORT time.

So why block IE users and not just let them fend for themselves since you
don't "support" it? Because you're still going to get people trying to use
your site in IE. They're going to send you support emails and they're going to
complain to people about your shitty app not working. That costs time, money,
and reputation.

------
geoffvader
Wow. I can't believe what I'm seeing here.

"Development isn't easy so we're not gonna bother". Jesus, lets hope the
people looking for a cure for cancer don't give up that easily.

Here's a tip. Open IE9 and press F12. It lets you go to IE 7 and 8, in quirks
and standards mode.

Now that wasn't hard was it?

Most internet users use IE. If your clients are happy not to support them then
good for you. But most of mine would like people to be able to see their
website!!!

------
drewmclellan
Testing in different browsers is a real pain. Getting front end code working
properly in all those different browsers is even more of a pain. Getting that
code working really _well_ is harder still.

It takes time, dedication, skill, and a lot of specialist knowledge of bugs,
quirks, standards and tools.

That's the reason that front end development is a role in its own right, and
not just a function of someone else's role.

------
satovey
"It’s expensive getting hardware to test on, taking time to test it, making
sure you have a windows installation"

I infer two inferences from the above quote:

Inference 1. The individual is either a non paid, or poorly paid developer,

Inference 2.That developing on a mac is not as financially rewarding as
developing on a PC.

Why else would it be to costly to purchase an off the shelf PC from Walmart
for $500.00 for the purpose of testing IE 9?

------
xutopia
Supporting IE can be too much work. The Microsoft Knowledge base acknowledges
issues and then tells you that the solution is to change your IE options or
upgrade your browser. As if that will help with my users.

Sure the latest versions of IE are not as painful to support but if you check
worldwide statistics you'll notice that old versions of IE are still sticking
around.

~~~
rahx
so is your problem with ie or ignorant users?

------
e_proxus
Windows 7 Proffesional: $249 VirtualBox: Free \--- Total cost to run IE under
Mac: $249

Is it really that hard?

~~~
masklinn
> Windows 7 Proffesional: $249

Why would you do that? [http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=1157...](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=11575)

------
PaulHoule
It's pretty funny... Back in 2003 I worked at a place which couldn't test
software on Macs because they had an exclusive procurement contract with Dell.

As things turned out, I bought my first Mac, with my own money, so I could do
this kind of testing.

Now today, Macbook Pros are the fashionable thing west coast developers use --
they are pretty nice machines. Except for the fact that they can only be
loaded with 8 GB of RAM and for the kind of work I do, that's not enough.

So instead of being able to do the work on your local machine and have no
problems with VPN, debuggers, and all that, you need to rent a machine that's
$8000 a year in AWS and you don't get the benefit of turning it off when you
don't need it because the Ops guy is involved with turning it on and off and
god forbid another dev wants to use it and its turned off...

~~~
eropple
> Now today, Macbook Pros are the fashionable thing west coast developers use
> -- they are pretty nice machines. Except for the fact that they can only be
> loaded with 8 GB of RAM and for the kind of work I do, that's not enough.

All 15" MBPs from Early 2011 onward support 16GB of RAM. It's not documented,
but they do.

------
jayferd
FWIW, as a Linux user I have the same problem with Safari. But thankfully it
uses the same rendering engine as Chrome, so I can be relatively sure that if
it works in one, it works in the other.

IE is another can of worms.

------
leephillips
If you use these two free tools, your days of developing "for" particular
browsers will be over:

    
    
        http://validator.w3.org/
    
        http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

------
evilvoidhamster
the reason i bought a mac was to be able to test my work on all OS's. I
thought that was a normal sensible thing todo (i.e. i can bootcamp and vm my
way to full support)

------
givan
In some cases, not supporting IE is like a filter, if you offer a web service
that involves some web tech background from users then it will save you some
support hours, people that don't understand basic stuff like what a browser is
can be a pain for support or probably would never signup either.

~~~
bartj3
True, and that is probably the case for Paydirt, but there's a difference
between not supporting and actively blocking. Less than 2% of Paydirt's
visitors use IE, so dropping support is a logical choice. Maybe even display a
warning to IE users but don't block them.

~~~
chris_wot
You haven't given an actual reason why they shouldn't block IE users. Could
you explain why that is?

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rahx
"Your main job is development, not being a hipster." right on!

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sil3ntmac
ievms dude, _ievms_.

<https://github.com/xdissent/ievms>

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chris_wot
Interesting. I created a javascript module that emulates an ActiveX control.
It needs to parse binary data sent from the web server.

I actually got it working in Opera, Firefox, Chrome and Safari via JDataView,
which parses the binary data via a string. However, it doesn't work in
Internet Explorer because IE will _not_ read past a zero byte (null
character). The data is actually there, you can see it in the debugger, but it
won't let you get to it. This behaviour isn't mandated by the ECMA spec, and
all other browsers handle it fine.

You can do a massive VBScript hack, which may stop working at any time. I
decided that I'd not support Internet Explorer because I can't use it - even
in _IE9 and 10_. Call me lazy if you like - I don't care. I'm not hacking up
VBscript to get around a crazy Microsoft Javascript string processing
decision!

~~~
untog
Holy edge case, batman!

I get what you're saying, but no-one in this discussion is trying to emulate
ActiveX controls, just make a web site. And recent versions of IE really
aren't that bad for it.

~~~
chris_wot
Actually, that was my use case. Quite a few people are using jdataview for
other interesting applications. I was merely explaining what I was trying to
do, sure it's an edge case but it's actually an example of where Microsoft
don't follow the ECMA standard.

Not sure why the post was voted down. I think the fact that Microsoft aren't
following the ECMA standard for string processing is actually a fairly
egregious example of why it's just not worthwhile in many instances to develop
for IE.

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slig
Did you guys forget what pain in the ass was a couple of years ago when IE was
the most used browser everywhere?

Seriously, f. Microsoft. Just because finally they made a decent browser,
doesn't mean that we should be that grateful. Their business was "make a
shitty browser while we can", and now that they can't anymore "ok, sorry guys,
here's very nice browser, btw, it won't work on our most used OS version, even
though every other browser works".

~~~
sgift
"We" simply prefer to base our decisions on the current state of affairs, not
on the way things where years ago. If your business requires you to support
IE, do it. If not: don't. But please don't make it sound like you have some
holy war to fight. Thanks.

~~~
axefrog
^ This.

