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teh website |
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Paul Vernon |
Message #119172, posted by PaulV at 08:39, 20/10/2011, in reply to message #119170 |
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Posts: 135
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If I ignored IE6, I'd lose a lot of business. A lot of corporates still use IE6 to test how sites look and have thousands of desktops with IE6 installed.
Sadly, as Microsoft will be supporting IE6 until April 2014 it means this situation isn't likely to change for another couple of years at least...
For maximum user access, ignore IE6 at your peril.
EDIT: To back that up in figures. On one of my reasonably high traffic sites, IE (all versions) delivers ~500,000 visits and > 2.4 million page impressions, 3% of those visits are IE6 that's ~15000 visits and ~72000 pages.
All IE versions put together equate to approximately 50% of the entire visitor count on a monthly basis so it works out that ~1.5% of users are still on IE6. It sounds small as a percentage but when you're talking about millions of visits, it's a significant figure.
Paul
[Edited by PaulV at 10:42, 20/10/2011] |
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Andrew Poole |
Message #119173, posted by andypoole at 12:24, 20/10/2011, in reply to message #119172 |
Posts: 5558
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If I ignored IE6, I'd lose a lot of business. A lot of corporates still use IE6 to test how sites look and have thousands of desktops with IE6 installed.
Sadly, as Microsoft will be supporting IE6 until April 2014 it means this situation isn't likely to change for another couple of years at least...
For maximum user access, ignore IE6 at your peril. So why, then, do you suppose Microsoft have publicly urged people to stop using it and Google stopped supporting it early last year, as did YouTube and Facebook? Most of the big websites out there have completely dropped support for it - most of them well over a year ago. It's really not worth supporting IE6 at all in this day and age, and continuing to support it on your site is only going to prolong the agony.
Just because Microsoft are officially supporting it until 2014, doesn't mean you have to. Just drop it and move on. Anyone who has problems viewing the website will either upgrade or put up with it - it's their own fault for using a browser that's over 10 years old. |
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Paul Vernon |
Message #119174, posted by PaulV at 14:33, 20/10/2011, in reply to message #119173 |
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Posts: 135
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I support it through necessity rather than choice. My clients have *thousands* of IE6 installations still and they *require* that their websites work in IE6. Pure and simple.
As MS have committed to support those installations of IE6 until April 2014. I have no choice.
EDIT: The idea that my clients will "upgrade or put up with it being broken" is frankly naive from an investment point of view. The licencing costs to upgrade that many computers is massive and no-one wants to pay a web developer for a site that the client can't see properly in their corporate environment. They don't care that IE6 is over 10 years old, they just see a broken website and refuse to pay.
When you're talking about the scale of things in this area, it just doesn't make sense for them to change until there are compelling reasons and AFAICT the only compelling reason to upgrade for them is when official MS support ends.
Paul
[Edited by PaulV at 15:40, 20/10/2011] |
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Andrew Poole |
Message #119175, posted by andypoole at 15:17, 20/10/2011, in reply to message #119174 |
Posts: 5558
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I support it through necessity rather than choice. My clients have *thousands* of IE6 installations still and they *require* that their websites work in IE6. Pure and simple.
As MS have committed to support those installations of IE6 until April 2014. I have no choice. Yes, and for over a year now, they've been recommending people don't use it any more. They may offer "support" for it, but they're actively telling you to upgrade to the newer version as soon as possible. There's a reason for that 
EDIT: The idea that my clients will "upgrade or put up with it being broken" is frankly naive from an investment point of view. The licencing costs to upgrade that many computers is massive and no-one wants to pay a web developer for a site that the client can't see properly in their corporate environment. They don't care that IE6 is over 10 years old, they just see a broken website and refuse to pay. Licensing cost to upgrade from IE6 to 7/8/9? It's a free update provided over Windows Update. There's no "cost" to the license, as it's provided as a free update for the existing OS - which they've already got the license for. There's no excuse to be using a ten year old browser.
When you're talking about the scale of things in this area, it just doesn't make sense for them to change until there are compelling reasons and AFAICT the only compelling reason to upgrade for them is when official MS support ends. It makes perfect sense from a security standpoint, for a start. Then, of course, there's compatibility since many large websites (as mentioned earlier, Google, YouTube, Facebook among them) who now don't support IE6 in their products.
Lots of companies still "support" ancient versions of their software (mostly due to contracts and existing licenses), but that's not to say that you should still use those ancient versions until the day the support ends.
[Just to add some context, I work for a web development company. We stopped supporting IE6 in sites we create and manage mid-last year. We've had little to no complaints about compatibility - including from the more popular sites which receive a very large number of hits.] |
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Stephen Scott |
Message #119176, posted by sa_scott at 15:22, 20/10/2011, in reply to message #119174 |
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I support it through necessity rather than choice. My clients have *thousands* of IE6 installations still and they *require* that their websites work in IE6. Pure and simple. I'm surprised you want your site to work with corporate computers. Most corporate networks would not allow games to be played anyway, or your site would be blocked.
Out in the real world, improved browser takeup has made life easier with regards to IE6. Unfortunately, IE7 is taking the mantle of most difficult browser. And how many years will it be before that one is retired?
It's a sad fact that most of your visitors aren't going to care how it's built, just as long as it works. Properly semantic HTML makes sense, if you want your site to work on mobiles as well as desktops. The choice of end user devices to view sites on is far too many to support individually 
Regards
Steve |
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Paul Vernon |
Message #119177, posted by PaulV at 15:56, 20/10/2011, in reply to message #119176 |
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Posts: 135
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Ummm it's their corporate website that I built. Why would I not want it to work with their de-facto corporate web browser which is IE6.
@Andrew. There's a very good reason why you can't upgrade to > IE6 also... It's called Windows 2000 Pro. Yes, you read that right. Thousands of desktops *requiring* licencing fees to upgrade thereby incurring a cost to upgrade the browser.
I'm not arguing for IE6. I'd have dumped it years ago. The problem is clients who insist on their websites working with IE6 before settling any invoices... I have to eat after all!
Paul |
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Andrew Poole |
Message #119178, posted by andypoole at 16:31, 20/10/2011, in reply to message #119177 |
Posts: 5558
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Ummm it's their corporate website that I built. Why would I not want it to work with their de-facto corporate web browser which is IE6.
@Andrew. There's a very good reason why you can't upgrade to > IE6 also... It's called Windows 2000 Pro. Yes, you read that right. Thousands of desktops *requiring* licencing fees to upgrade thereby incurring a cost to upgrade the browser.
I'm not arguing for IE6. I'd have dumped it years ago. The problem is clients who insist on their websites working with IE6 before settling any invoices... I have to eat after all! That being the case, they shouldn't expect to be able to have a CSS based layout that works properly. If it must work in IE6, use tables - it's far more reliable (and easier to implement!).
At the end of the day, they can't have it both ways. They can't expect to be able to use a website with newer design features (CSS, etc) unless they use a vaguely modern browser that supports those features properly. |
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Trevor Johnson |
Message #119179, posted by trevj at 04:25, 21/10/2011, in reply to message #119178 |
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Posts: 660
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At the end of the day, they can't have it both ways. Do these kinds of clients have the slightest inkling of what websites are and how they work? Perhaps such ignorant clients are also noted as being the most lucrative. |
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Tony Haines |
Message #119180, posted by Loris at 09:04, 21/10/2011, in reply to message #119176 |
 Ha ha, me mine, mwahahahaha
Posts: 1025
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I'm surprised you want your site to work with corporate computers. Most corporate networks would not allow games to be played anyway, or your site would be blocked. Just to be clear, I am not Paul Vernon - I notice we have the same length name and username, so perhaps similar at a glance.
It's a sad fact that most of your visitors aren't going to care how it's built, just as long as it works. I would be surprised if any of my visitors cared - but they will believe Microsoft when it claims it's the website's fault. That's probably part of why they're not upgrading.
I tried changing the width expression to different numbers, and it still crashes IE6, perhaps a bit less often.
I tried removing it entirely; still crashes. No debugging information seems to be provided, and I don't think I can be bothered to try and track it down any more, so I guess I'm going to stop worrying about it.
I might use conditionals to put a message about it being deprecated on the main page or something. |
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Jason Togneri |
Message #119181, posted by filecore at 09:11, 21/10/2011, in reply to message #119180 |
Posts: 3868
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No debugging information seems to be provided Where are you looking for your debugging info? I assume you've tried the system log (via Event Viewer) as well as IE6's own debug output. You may also consider installing DebugBar. |
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Stephen Scott |
Message #119182, posted by sa_scott at 10:24, 21/10/2011, in reply to message #119177 |
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Posts: 73
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Ummm it's their corporate website that I built. Why would I not want it to work with their de-facto corporate web browser which is IE6. Apologies, I got you confused with the original poster, whose website is games related.
Yes, your hands are tied if you're working with corporate networks tied to IE6. One of my recent contract jobs had been using IE6 until April this year, and moved to IE8. But only after a thorough audit of all their intranet systems, and development software. |
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Tony Haines |
Message #119198, posted by Loris at 17:44, 23/10/2011, in reply to message #119181 |
Ha ha, me mine, mwahahahaha
Posts: 1025
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No debugging information seems to be provided Where are you looking for your debugging info? I assume you've tried the system log (via Event Viewer) as well as IE6's own debug output. You may also consider installing DebugBar.
Heh, that's an invalid assumption - I know very little about windows PC development, only Flash.
The event viewer didn't have any events for IE, anyway. As it's not on my computer I don't want to install stuff (neither do I want to install IE6 on this computer).
Thanks for these suggestions, but I think I'll take up your other proposal and deprecate it. |
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Lady Tao |
Message #125309, posted by LadyTao at 01:05, 30/6/2022, in reply to message #119171 |
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Posts: 1
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Quite. Today's Date.
That said, it's probably fairly typical of RISC OS users and developers to be stuck in the past. I suppose being hung up on buggy crap from "only" a decade ago is probably a step forward. At least it's not buggy crap from two decades ago. I fully agree.
It would be more productive if they upgrade or retire these old tools.
[Edited by LadyTao at 02:06, 30/6/2022] |
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