Browser Thoughts

[DemonOuterverse]

I'm a middle aged hand on as far as internet time goes, I say middle aged because my first browser was AOL and MSIE4 and not Netscape 1 like some. But, I've been around long enough to see a lot of browsers come and go. One thing I keep seeing brought up recently is the refusal to urge abandon old and broken browers for better ones.

Why should we keep developing for (MS)IE6 when (W)IE7 and others are far better to work with. We as web developers and standards orgnizations (like W3C) are responsible to bring higher quality content as new things become available, so why should we be the ones to choke down our vision and goals for the sake of someone still using something like (MS)IE6? Should we not take responsibility to encourage users to update to better alternatives?

I just see the push to continue to support bad apps like (MS)IE6 as one that is detremental not just to the internet as a whole, but to the user of said app. It seems like this mentality has only been established in the days since the fall of Netscape. If that mentality were in place we would still be under the absolute barebones of HTML with statements of "Don't use IMG tags or develop for Netscape 3 because you'll drive all of your NCSA Mosaic and Lynx users away." This resisitance to utilizing the innovations over the past few years is, in my opinion, harming the web. Frankly, I don't give a damn that (MS)IE6 has a larger market share, that doesn't mean we should willingly support it knwing that it is bad. If web deveopers stop dumbing down to meet (MS)IE6, people will stop using it and so far very few are willing to give users a reason to STOP using it. Quite bluntly, we need to start dragging people kicking and screaming into the 21st century's Web2.0 and beyond.

[Wayne Luke]

Develop for your target audience. If they use IE6 then develop for it. If they use IE7 then focus on that.

<a href="http://alistapart.com/" target="_blank">http://alistapart.com/</a> go there is you want to know about the why and whatnot... reasons why we do not code for cross-browsers platforms now because this is an obsolete philosophy!!!

[cheat-master30]

Firstly, I agree 100% with what has been said about not supporting obsolete browsers. Stop coding for obsolete junk, code for the future. The reason people are still probably using such browsers is either because they don't know about them or they have no reason to change. Make them change. Stop supporting the out of date browsers until they have no alternatives but to upgrade.

Besides, CSS layout and standards support IS cross compatible. Just those who don't upgrade get a cut down version which still separates design from content. Don't aim for pixel perfection cross compatability, aim as best you can for it to work in the modern browsers with better standards support.

But I hate the attitudes of many corporations to backwards compatability. Building everything with tables and inline styles just to support browsers as old as Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer 5. Trying to get pixel exact layouts across everything from the dawn of the internet. Just drop the support for old browsers in such software. vBulletin for one should reduce tables to where they're needed (and also add the tag to the BB code list, but that's another thing). You don't need to support such old browsers. I'm quite sure most website owners somewhat know about the browser situation by now.

Besides, think they'll go elsewhere? Forget it, not with all the pure standards and CSS layout support of many free and not so free software now. There's nowhere to go, nothing to choose then other than upgrading.

Also on that topic, stop using things like font tags and BR line breaks for what should be CSS and paragraphs in posts. Heck, browsers UP to Internet Explorer 4 or so could support even the formatting CSS, there's no need to use such inline styling.

Sorry if I went off topic, and sorry if it's slighty incoherent; I haven't been able to think so much about how to write better recently.

[Freesteyelz]

Originally Posted by cheat-master30

Don't aim for pixel perfection cross compatability, aim as best you can for it to work in the modern browsers with better standards support.

I've learned quite a bit about CSS, how it's used, how it renders and how powerful it can be by coding to the pixel for the goal of near perfection. Yes, on the practical level you make a great point and unless you have the time and patience I do not suggest for someone to take my approach. Still, I take on the philosophy: If you can get near perfection then do so.

like Freesteyelz say, there is no perfection... even if you use the best technique on CSS/XHTML, IE or Opera will crash all your work because you use Firefox... or the opposite...

if your site is dedicated to design, graphics etc, yes you have to focus on the same topic regarding the style of the site, because if you use old techniques, you will miss the point of your own forum... be great!