

IE6 Must Die (along with 7 and 8) - audionerd
http://blogs.walkerart.org/newmedia/2009/07/17/ie6-must-die-along-with-7-and-8/

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9oliYQjP
I recently prototyped a site using CSS that only Safari 3+ and FireFox 3+
could understand. I never loaded IE up once while doing it. Boy was it a
pleasure being able to have a CSS stylesheet declare rounded borders with one
declaration. The problem with supporting IE at all is that so few (almost
none) of the CSS functionality that eliminates hacks we've been working with
are available. Even IE8 isn't enough. So choosing to support IE at all means
intentionally refusing to adopt features supported by Safari and FireFox. That
is, _unless_ you want an inconsistent experience for your users.

But why do we have to provide a perfectly consistent experience between
desktop browsers?I'm starting to think that this is precisely what we should
do to force MS to get with the times. Let your site degrade for IE in ways
that do not break core functionality or fundamental design requirements. When
users start figuring out that they can't see a prettier version of NYTimes
because IE doesn't support @font-face, rounded corners, CSS transformations,
and other advanced CSS functionality, many will decide to switch.

The difference between this approach now and how it was implemented in the 90s
during the Netscape/IE wars, is that it's a best practice to degrade
gracefully but retain important functionality now. The criticism of this
strategy back then is that many sites simply did not work at all in one
browser or the other. That would be unacceptable.

~~~
blasdel
Fonts are a really bad example for the (otherwise valid) "fuck IE" mindset --
Internet Explorer was the first to support downloadable fonts, by a margin of
at least 5 years!

The only problem is that you have to convert the font into an arbitrarily
different format, ans Adobe and the foundries would have screamed bloody
murder (as they are doing now with @font-face) if you could just use plain
TrueType and OpenType fonts.

Webkit has supported @font-face for quite a while, Mozilla is the real
straggler here -- they repeatedly refused to implement it for _a decade_ , and
when they finally did they added a bullshit same-origin policy. At least they
didn't introduce a second stupid webfont format!

~~~
pbhj
Yeah but MSIE decided to go with EOT which is arguably why no-one else
bothered. If they'd used TTF then other browsers would have implemented it
earlier because it would actually be a usable solution.

~~~
derefr
I don't think the format was ever really the problem; people are willing to
put up with all sorts of conversion shite to get things up on the web (FLV,
for example.) IE's problem was entirely that it was ahead-of-its-time in this
regard: fonts were too big on yesterday's internet to download at a decent
clip for instant display, and there weren't any open fonts that anyone was
interested in using.

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rjurney
Anti-trust had no teeth last decade because of the 'privatization is good,
private enterprise can do no wrong' economic orgy that just came crashing
down, and as a result IE has held the internet back a decade. Just THINK of
where we would be if Netscape had won.

The political climate has shifted in the wake of the housing crisis, so...
could a _class action suit_ have some teeth? Think of all the money lost in
fixing IE-specific bugs that only exist because Microsoft used its monopoly to
shove an inferior browser onto every desktop, and then refused to put
resources into developing it, to ensure they continued to make money on rich
client applications and their operating system. Think of the cumulative cost
of fixing IE bugs across our entire economy.

Microsoft owes the American people billions for IE. I want a class action suit
against them. There are IE-specific bug billing records that surely amount to
billions of dollars at companies across America. Companies would line up with
invoices to web developers to join the suit.

Microsoft owes us all money. They must be stopped, and they must pay.

~~~
req2
"I made the perfect accessory, but it only works with electric cars. GM abused
their car monopoly to make gas engines, not electric engines, costing me
money.

GM owes us all money. GM must be stopped, and GM must pay."

(I'll also note that you didn't give Microsoft any money when IE helped you
make money, and they're not your insurance policy when you don't make money,
either.)

~~~
pbhj
> "IE helped you make money"

If IE6 hadn't existed then we would have had Op., Konq, FF, Saf and been able
to move onto use PNG about 8 years earlier, the agreed box model for CSS, less
screwy flash implementation, etc.. In addition we'd probably have moved on a
lot more with SVG and XHTML would have been accepted by all browsers so we
wouldn't be moving backwards from XML to less a consistent SGML-like HTML.
We'd have been able to use opacity earlier. Web designers would have been able
to concentrate on extended functionality and graceful design rather that how
messed up IE was. Websites would have cost 20%+ less to make.

How the heck has IE helped make web designers / devs money? That's like saying
having a leg amputation helped to make you more mobile.

~~~
req2
Without standing very firmly behind the argument, Microsoft popularized
computers in a serious way that provided the market that provided web jobs.
You can argue that without Microsoft, the collection of marginal suppliers
would have stepped up and provided the same large market, but you can't show
that very well.

(Another argument suggests that the automatically provided browser enhanced
the interest in the internet - "I have this program that doesn't work! I must
make it work by getting the internet!" - that may not have existed without IE
preinstalled. "If the internet is so useful, why didn't it come preinstalled,
like Office did?")

~~~
pbhj
I guess then AOL helped me to make money too. Time Berners-Lee helped me to
make money. Wife beating helped me to make money (one of my clients is a
womens' aid group). Bit obtuse.

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rbritton
Subsequent versions of IE have gotten dramatically better, but the time delta
between versions is too long. From its wikipedia page:

    
    
        IE5: September 1997
        IE6: August 2001 (+4 years)
        IE7: October 2006 (+9 years)
        IE8: March 2009 (+11.5 years)
    

Safari, Firefox, et al do not have a similar lag and have been able to
implement newer standards much more quickly. WebKit, for example, is in active
development, and the version of the framework in use by Safari is updated
fairly regularly.

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youngian
How depressing. I think we all knew this deep down, but he puts it very
eloquently. IE will always be holding the web back, at least for the _entire
forseeable future_. Even as a lifelong cynic, this still bummed me out.

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pmichaud
I thought this was link bait, but he makes a compelling argument.

~~~
warfangle
He does, but fuchsia background colors on :hover makes it aggravating to read.
Thank goodness for being able to disable stylesheets..

~~~
audionerd
or the Readability bookmarklet :)

<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

~~~
warfangle
This is amazing. Thank you!!

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ZeroGravitas
I wouldn't be surprised if IE6 outlasted IE7 as all the people who could
upgrade from IE6 (not locked down corporate machines that need to access
outdated intranet sites) have no reason to stay on IE7 either.

In that respect I think and hope he's wrong. If anyone's writing internal
business apps today that will only ever work on one version of one browser
then they should be taken out and shot.

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rimantas
It does, albeit too slow. According to our ranking site <http://ranking.lt/>
IE share felt below 50% for the first time. One should have in mind, that this
is not stats from some geek/webdev site, but collected by online advertising
company, so it is even more likely that the stats are skewed in favor of IE.

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TravisLS
I don't really agree with this assessment. With the release of IE8, we also
saw the browser upgrade coming through automatic windows updates. IE will
eventually probably accept this as much as safari and firefox, thereby keeping
most users up to speed.

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jdavid
you should support IE6 as a separate product, and via a separate feature
timeline.

if you can launch a web app for browsers that are modern and relevant in 4
weeks, and doing it for IE takes an additional 2-4 weeks, why wait to launch
those features for a broken browsers, support and reward users with current
browsers by giving them 1st access to new features.

supporting IE6 on a different roadmap means you can do ROI on each feature,
and if IE6 is to expensive to develop a feature for, then...... gasp... you
can just skip it.

