
IE 8 is the new IE 6 - mcav
http://infrequently.org/2010/10/ie-8-is-the-new-ie-6/
======
seldo
This complaint is as old as the hills. You may as well slap an obnoxious
"Designed for HTML5" button on your site. The cost of having the world's
largest addressable audience of any development platform is that web
developers have to deal with the fact that it varies a lot. Them's the breaks.

Edit: because I hate comments that are purely negative, my suggestion for
getting users to the latest technologies is to use libraries (like YUI and
jQuery) which do the hard work of implementing newer features in backwards
compatible ways, but use the modern feature if it's available. That way the
difference between IE8 and a more recent browser becomes one of performance
rather than the binary absence of functionality. Users can that way see what
they're missing and have a reason to upgrade that's more compelling than the
designer petulantly insisting their browser sucks.

~~~
evo_9
The thing about all this I don't get is that IE8 is not anywhere near as bad
as IE6 was. Like you mentioned, using libraries like YUI, or jQuery really
mitigate a lot of the problems.

If you also plan a bit up front and have a competent designer to help out with
the css definitions and strategizing (like avoiding gradients for now,
fun/cool as they be), it's really not that big a deal.

I'm working on a new site and I've literally done nothing other than have a
designer help out with the CSS and the only difference between Firefox,
Safari, Chrome and IE8 are css drop-shadows, and rounded corners. Purely
cosmetic, unlike IE6 which if you didn't account for it could stop your app in
it's tracks.

To me IE8, as much as I would never personally use it, is a huge improvement
from IE6. Even over IE7 it's hugely better, easier to deal with.

~~~
Xixi
IE6 was a gigantic improvement over IE5.5, too. The problem is not there, the
problem is that people are still stuck with IE6 today, close to ten years
later...

IE8 seems not so bad today, but without any support for html5, css3, canvas,
video or websockets, what will you think 10 years from now ? That it sucks: it
will force you to have Flash/Silverlight fallbacks to do something as trivial
as plotting a graph or displaying a video. Yet many XP users will still be
using it, so you will have to support it...

~~~
evo_9
MS with IE6 had a cavalier, take-it-or-leave-it approach to features/standards
and sought to subvert/control the web/web browser-market.

MS with IE8 (an IE9) are actually trying to make their browser standards
compliant and while we might not like the pace of the behemoth, it's moving in
the right direction and this is a good thing.

2010 is a much different landscape than 2005 as far as the browser market goes
as well; MS/IE are no longer the dominant juggernaut that can attempt to
dictate standards.

More than anything IE releases are tied to MS's OS releases - IE8 has become
the largest slice of the IE pie because of Win7, not because of features or
any push by MS. As MS increases their release cycle of both browsers and more
importantly, OS's, the likelihood of a IE6 repeat with IE8 is extremely thin.
MS can't sit around on any version of a major product like they did with both
XP and IE6.

------
pavel_lishin
> I’m developing for the future exclusively

Weird, I'm developing for my employer, and by extension for our clients.

~~~
acqq
We should let the OP "develop for the future" and keep our sites providing the
_content_ for everybody who has _any_ browser.

After some time we can compare the notes.

(I wonder how he imagines that I would even try to access his site with
anything else but with Opera Mobile from my phone).

------
metamemetics
Yes, but IE9 will also be the new IE8 eventually. Perhaps automatic embedding
of unicorns becomes the new css-gradient and textshadow in 10 years. Designing
for the minority isn't a very good solution.

A better solution:

embedded SVG rendering within <img> and <htmlelements> cross browser. Then you
can assemble ANY trendy graphical element without having to wait for people to
continually agree on, release, and implement css4, css5, css6, etc.

Other benefits:

\- it's an XML format like HTML

\- Machines can now scrape understand and generate pictures too

\- Vector graphics will scale great with different zoom\resolution settings

\- Designers can use tools like Adobe Illustrator, a more logical approach
than css-versionX hacking that fits the problem domain better

~~~
ars
>Yes, but IE9 will also be the new IE8 eventually.

I think the problem is that microsoft is tying the browser version to the OS
version. Will you be able to install IE9 on XP?

~~~
metamemetics
I don't think the underlying problem has to do with specific companies and
applies to older versions of Firefox as well. The underlying problem is:

(Demand\Rate of requests for specification changes) >> (rate of widespread
implementation)

...ensuring there will always be a very narrow audience for the latest
features.

While it's good to increase the rate at which new specifications are
implemented, it's largely impossible to do without authoritarian measures to
A) control the programmers working on every web browser B) control
specification committees to agree faster. edit: _or C) make everyone use the
same web browser_

Another approach is to DECREASE the rate of [edit: demand for] specification
change. I think a large part of the problem is our expectations from the CSS
specification. We are trying to expand its problem domain to include the
construction of graphics and graphical effects, something which it was clearly
not built for on a syntactical level! It might be better to convince browser
teams with limited resources to better support long existing open standards to
handle the dynamic creation of graphics with more logical syntax. Because the
rate at which specification revisions are required will be drastically
reduced. Whereas the process for creating new graphical features to your
website via CSS is to submit it to a committee and wait 5years, it is done
within the syntax of SVG. Making it a better allocation of resources.

------
grandalf
The best way to help is to port Chrome to Windows 2000.

Firefox is too slow to be usable on most Windows 2000 boxes, IE newer than 6
isn't supported, and Chrome isn't supported, which makes IE6 the best option.

~~~
melling
Windows 2000 doesn't appear to have any significant market share.

<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp>

~~~
grandalf
Who uses IE6 on XP? Pirated copies of XP? That's bizarre.

~~~
vasi
How about half the population of China?
[http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-CN-
monthly-200909...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-CN-
monthly-200909-201009) Plus folks at many organizations with conservative IT
policies.

~~~
loupgarou21
I know I had to do some voodoo to make a website we setup work right for a
client because all of their internal windows computers were still running IE6

------
jaspero
This will always be a problem. The corporates and most of the business will
always use whatever comes with their OS, for a simple reason that they don't
have administrative rights to upgrade their browser, or simply because its
just an extra overhead for the corporation to upgrade thousands of their
workstations.

I can't think of any alternatives to this problem. I am pretty sure I will
still be considering IE6 while developing websites in 2015, let alone IE8.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Not to mention that IE's turn-around time will almost always be longer than,
for instance, Firefox's, or Chrome's, etc., since Microsoft is inherently less
flexible than the others.

Oh, and don't forget that a lot of proprietary corporate apps are written to
work ONLY in IE6. I wonder if a "legacy" mode for new versions of IE would
alleviate part of this problem. (And yeah, I know that there's a big fat bag
of poisonous acid-spitting kitten-eating snakes that this would open up.)

~~~
jaspero
Firefox and Chrome would have the same fate, if they are as widely used as
Windows/IE and comes default with an OS(Windows killer), like IE.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Which fate? Slow release cycles, or apps written specifically for a single
browser?

~~~
jaspero
Fate as in, if Mozilla came up with a Windows-killer OS and all the Windows
user moved to the new Mozilla OS. Than people will be stuck with FF 3.6, even
after 10 years from now.

~~~
heimidal
There is no evidence to support this assertion.

The new auto-upgrade model Mozilla has adopted for FF 4.0 (and that Chrome has
had for ages) makes upgrade cycles, for all practical purposes, negligible.

Chrome 6.0 was released on September 2. Since then, Chrome 5.0's market share
has dropped to nearly 0%, with Chrome 6.0 picking up all of 5.0's share while
also absorbing a good amount of IE's share.

If Microsoft instituted an auto-upgrade path for IE and released updates with
more regularity, this would slowly become a thing of the past.

~~~
jaspero
I haven't tried it but can you upgrade those browsers without administrative
rights? I am assuming you can't do it on corporate settings.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
On Windows, if the user installs Chrome, it's installed into the user's home
directory (local application data or something). This means the user does not
need admin rights to either install or upgrade Chrome.

------
moqalib
As long as features can be simulated adoption will stagnate. As much as we
like to think we (the developers) are in control of browser adoption, the
simple reality is that we're not. The end users are. The "normals". They don't
give a shit if your box-shadow uses a PNG or is implemented using CSS3. They
don't know the difference between canvas and flash. Hey! it works right?

I honestly believe that the way to move the web forward is by letting browsers
innovate at the expense of standards, and for developers to adopt non-
aesthetic API's that will cause functional differences from the stagnating
dominant incumbent if there is one at the time (at the moment IE).

In other words, when developers get pissed, they find solutions. When end
users get pissed, the switch browsers, or decide your app is not worth it. Our
goal is to get that proposition in front of end users as often as possible,
and create enough value that they choose the former.

~~~
simonw
I don't think I've ever met a web developer who thinks they're in control of
browser adoption. We're slaves to dumb corporate IT policies and users who
don't even understand the concept of a browser, let alone what it would mean
to "upgrade" one.

------
Yaggo
> I’m developing for the future exclusively and asking users of legacy
> browsers to adopt a modern browser or install Chrome Frame. It’s an uphill
> battle from here, but nobody is going to bend this curve but us.

I do exactly the same. Unless generously compensated, I refuse to develop for
outdated broswers while an easy plug-in solution exists.

------
xentronium
I wonder if Microsoft has to support Win XP forever in the eyes of the author.

I don't know of a single reason why you shouldn't switch from xp to seven
aside from evil corporate policies.

~~~
brownleej
What about the system requirements? As sad as it may be, a lot of people in
under-funded organizations are stuck using computers that are 5-10 years old,
which may not support Windows 7.

~~~
xentronium
I saw several netbooks (which are not famous for horsepower) upgraded to win7
without a single problem.

------
cletus
I think it's safe to generalize this as:

IE _n_ is the new IE _(n-1)_

