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RE[10]: Comment by shmerl
by Laurence on Tue 18th Dec 2012 22:45 UTC in reply to "RE[9]: Comment by shmerl"
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No it is because you don't understand web development.

I've been building websites since 1994 and have used ASP (horrid), ASP.NET, PHP, CGI (in a variety of languages), mod_perl and JSP. I've built push sites since before it was AJAX, developed my own CMS, two different message boards, a HTML D&D game, and a HTML chat site (the latter two before HTML portals were common place).

I've written Java applets, ActiveX plugins (ewww), Flash plugins (yuk) and even developed an entire site in 3D back before it 3D accelerated graphics cards were affordable (if you were wondering, that was done in VRML 2.0).

I've also managed a plethora of web servers including (but not limited to) IIS, Apache and lighttpd on Windows, Linux (various distros), FreeBSD and Solaris.

Also, I've built a couple of different web scrapers, my own bespoke web browser and a chat bot for a 3rd party HTML chat site.

So don't tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about.

There is a lot of articles that can talk about it better than I. The basic message is progressive enhancement, the idea is the web page scales to the user-agent.

I know what you're crudely trying to describe, designing site so that non-compatible layers fall away elegantly (typically unsupported CSS tages). Yes it's the ideal way to build a side, but it's not always ideal to build a site like that. HTML5 is at a point where it can replace Flash, but to do so, you either have to write horrible hacks to support non-HTML5 browsers, fall back to Flash (yuk) or exclude those users entirely.

Plus even on my latest project where I've got a layout that supports such a concept, I'm having to write a few IE hacks to work around a lack of PNG transparency on older versions of IE.

The same argument has been used by others as to why IE had to innovate recently.

IE hasn't innovated recently.
Well, aside the process separation for tabs. But 1 new idea after 15 years of slumber is hardly an achievement.

Not being funny, but this comes back to De-facto vs De-jure standards. -Webkit extensions have become de-facto on mobile.

Well I was never disagreeing with that. Only the BS you posted about IE.

Actually I have built quite a few websites and I have no problems with cross browser problems until it is something the browser can't do WITHOUT hacks. That is when I use IE specific stylesheets and I use them sparingly.

I'd wager you use hack far more than you're letting on. Whether it's the framework handling the hacks for you (eg jQuery) or a subtle bit of conditional style, it's pretty much a requirement if you want to develop anything worth visiting. (even my current project, a site designed to elegantly fail for early browsers and has been tested against the likes of Lynx (command line browser), needs a conditional for IE 7 and below. Not even Lynx needed that.

IE6 was never garbage when it came out. In fact it was built against a draft standard that was changed shortly after it's release.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

I actually try understanding what the browser is doing before writing hacks and see if what I am doing is even a sensible markup before continuing.

I should hope so. That's why it's called "programming" rather than "blindly whacking the keyboard until something outputs".

Maybe now, but it proves that AT THE TIME people wanted IE better than Netscape when we were working on Dial-up.

Comparing one turd to another turd doesn't make the original turn any less shit.

However I love how you keep reverting back to tails from 2 decades ago to prove how relevant IE is today. :p

Bollox, I know how to program for a browser thanks and I don't need hacks.

I am sorry, but I am a competent web-dev. My English ain't the best but I know how to do develop a web page properly.

And "properly" often means having to server browser specific code. You do realise that the likes of jQuery has browser specific code in? Ever use jQuery? How about any of the other popular frameworks?

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[11]: Comment by shmerl
by lucas_maximus on Wed 19th Dec 2012 11:07 in reply to "RE[10]: Comment by shmerl"
lucas_maximus Member since:

Well that was a waste of time then.

I don't use hacks unless I have to. I don't support browsers that nobody uses.

I love these pretend problems you have with IE and calling things a turd when quite frankly they aren't.

Edited 2012-12-19 11:14 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[12]: Comment by shmerl
by Laurence on Wed 19th Dec 2012 12:37 in reply to "RE[11]: Comment by shmerl"
Laurence Member since:


Well clearly you don't build shops (or other portals with a traditional customer base) professionally. Perhaps your experience is limited to developing intranets for government networks and thus only ever had to specifically target IE6.

Either way, you're massively understating the fragmentation issues between browsers, and more specifically, IE.

Nearly every popular website has IE specific code in it. Regardless of whether that's server side code, client side conditionals or even just code within a framework, it's common place. Even OSNews does (just a quick glance through their jQuery libraries highlighted that).

I will concede that my sites have a lot of webkit, opera and mozilla specific code as well (in the form of browser specific CSS attributes), but IE is the only browser where I've had to write workarounds in Javascript, server side code and HTML.


Well I guess if you only every use IE then you'd be ignorant to the problems of it.

A bit like how you've only used one IDE from Borland and assumed their entire product range -past and present- was garbage.

Reply Parent Score: 2