The dropdowns work in IE6, they just appear waaay over to the right. I noticed the horizontal scrollbar pop up when I clicked on one, and I found the menu hanging out half a screen's width to the right of the rest of the page content. So it's not a functionality issue, it's a positioning issue.
Without looking at it, it sounds like a CSS problem. These things are usually trivial to fix for someone who knows the ins and outs of IE6.
As far as IE6, we do try to make sure that we have at least degraded support for it. I am very glad to say that IE6 only accounts for ~ 6% of our visitors. (I'm throwing a party when it reaches 1%!)
Wow, grats on that. The LOB software I develop still hangs in with 30-60% IE6 usage, even after a large campaign and a lot of support devoted to switching users to Firefox. /wrists
Without looking at it, it sounds like a CSS problem. These things are usually trivial to fix for someone who knows the ins and outs of IE6.
There are people like that? I'm scared
I have to second Belazor though, i don't have any IE6 anymore, and frankly, all other web dev i do (i try to keep it to a minimum, too) is only required to work on IE7.
I know of one issue with the Notifications popup being half-behind the nav bar in IE7, that i couldn't really fix after a few hours of research and testing, so i gave up. (z-index + div elements = nightmare for IE7)
If you can give me hints on how to fix the IE6 issues, please do. Otherwise, i could just disable the JS-magic for IE6 and let them use the default interface.
If you can give me hints on how to fix the IE6 issues, please do. Otherwise, i could just disable the JS-magic for IE6 and let them use the default interface.
Oh, wow. This site is pretty bad in IE6, looks like none of you have ever looked. Well, if it's really such a low user percentage, maybe you're fine. But if you did want to support IE6 you need to do a lot of work. Microsoft has a free VPC download containing a pre-activated copy of Windows with IE6 installed. Virtual PC is also free. You can test IE6 any time you want for free in this manner. I just keep the VPC paused so I can start it in about 3 seconds any time I need to do a quick test.
Here's a shot of how this thread looks in IE6. There isn't even a drop down next to the top Search link. The Search This Thread popup appears way off screen to the right.
According to this, IE6 still has 22.3% global browser share. For businesses, the percentage is much higher (I'd venture a guess of 50-80% right now). Luckily it seems this site in particular doesn't get many visits from it.
As for IE6, I see no reason why it should be supported. We've moved on since 2001.
P.S. Web browser popularity got nothing to do with whether it's supported.
As someone who has worked in web development, I must strongly disagree with you. When you are developing a website that is intended to be used by the public (as opposed to an internal corporate website) -- especially if it's intended to generate revenue for you -- popularity is everything in deciding whether or not to "support" a specific browser.
However, as stated in my previous post, regardless of whether or not you are "supporting" a specific browser, it's just bad from all kinds of standpoints to prevent a user from using your website because of what hardware and/or software they're using to access it.
The problem here is not IE6, though... the problem is that someone, somewhere (whether it be vB designers or WowAce/Curse designers, I have no idea) thought it would be cool to put 90% of the site's functions in annoying dropdown menus that don't work properly (or even at all, in some cases) without browser-specific scripting. It's very similar to the issue of collapsing nested lists -- the more common but horribly inaccessible technique is to use CSS to hide the list by default and show it via JavaScript when clicked, but the correct (and completely accessible) technique is to show the list by default and hide it via JavaScript when the page loads. The same problems and solutions are relevant to the dropdowns here on the forum.
As someone who has worked in web development, I must strongly disagree with you. When you are developing a website that is intended to be used by the public (as opposed to an internal corporate website) -- especially if it's intended to generate revenue for you -- popularity is everything in deciding whether or not to "support" a specific browser.
However, as stated in my previous post, regardless of whether or not you are "supporting" a specific browser, it's just bad from all kinds of standpoints to prevent a user from using your website because of what hardware and/or software they're using to access it.
The problem here is not IE6, though... the problem is that someone, somewhere (whether it be vB designers or WowAce/Curse designers, I have no idea) thought it would be cool to put 90% of the site's functions in annoying dropdown menus that don't work properly (or even at all, in some cases) without browser-specific scripting. It's very similar to the issue of collapsing nested lists -- the more common but horribly inaccessible technique is to use CSS to hide the list by default and show it via JavaScript when clicked, but the correct (and completely accessible) technique is to show the list by default and hide it via JavaScript when the page loads. The same problems and solutions are relevant to the dropdowns here on the forum.
I'm not sure what you mean by popularity at this point. There's basically three layout engines that are commonly used in web browsers: Gecko (Mozilla's), WebKit (Apple's) and Trident (Microsoft's). A website that works fine in Firefox, will display the same in, let's say, Flock, that's also using Gecko.
Both Gecko and WebKit have a solid implementation of modern web standards. IE6 got an old Trident engine with limited CSS support, from back when websites were primarily tabular.
For the scheme changing issue, are you guys trying to get the default wowace colors to be changed?.... Or do you just want another skin made that you can set as your personal default?
Because I, personally favor the wowace theme, it's confortable for me. But I'm a big fan of skins for forums xD, so it'd be schwei if additional themes were made that peopel could switch between.
According to this, IE6 still has 22.3% global browser share. For businesses, the percentage is much higher (I'd venture a guess of 50-80% right now). Luckily it seems this site in particular doesn't get many visits from it.
I don't remember exact numbers (ask Big K) but IE6 users are a small minority here. My site, which I'm sure has a very similar userbase, has 3.58% IE6 users. That's less than Chrome (5.63%). Why oh why would someone want to devote more time writing for IE6 than they spend writing for every other browser out there? I sure as hell won't!
*edit* Side note, I wouldn't call that page "global" by any means. It's the browser stats for their site only. Besides that, being a site for web developers, it's not really a good "diverse" sample.
As for IE6, I see no reason why it should be supported. We've moved on since 2001.
I'll email to our administrator that he has to update the browsers here without any delay... because I want to surf the Ace forums in a proper way. My boss will be quiet happy I guess. :p
Anyway... I didn't want to start a debate on principles about what browsers shall be supported. I'm also fine if it stays like this.
I couldn't've put it better myself. Is it worth all that work? So far all I've heard is a resounding NO
I don't remember exact numbers (ask Big K) but IE6 users are a small minority here. My site, which I'm sure has a very similar userbase, has 3.58% IE6 users. That's less than Chrome (5.63%). Why oh why would someone want to devote more time writing for IE6 than they spend writing for every other browser out there? I sure as hell won't!
*edit* Side note, I wouldn't call that page "global" by any means. It's the browser stats for their site only. Besides that, being a site for web developers, it's not really a good "diverse" sample.
read below. :P
Quote from Kaelten »
As far as IE6, we do try to make sure that we have at least degraded support for it. I am very glad to say that IE6 only accounts for ~ 6% of our visitors. (I'm throwing a party when it reaches 1%!)
Why oh why would someone want to devote more time writing for IE6 than they spend writing for every other browser out there? I sure as hell won't!
I couldn't have put that better myself. The time it takes to make sure stuff works in IE6 is vastly more than any time I spend actually writing the code to begin with. It's fricking ridiculous. I curse IE6 every day.
*edit* Side note, I wouldn't call that page "global" by any means. It's the browser stats for their site only. Besides that, being a site for web developers, it's not really a good "diverse" sample.
Right. Although they do say:
The statistics above are extracted from W3Schools' log-files, but we are also monitoring other sources around the Internet to assure the quality of these figures
there ya go, 90% of your web coding time spent for 6% of the users? NEVAR!
That's exactly the problem. IE6 really does take 90% of your time. It's a ridiculously bad browser. My point is, if they decide to support IE6, they clearly have a lot of work to do. If they don't want to support it, and they probably shouldn't given the percentage of hits they get, then no problem.
In the context of this web site, no support for IE6 makes sense. But in the real business world, where some of us make our money, IE6 is still there. If anyone wants to support it still, some of us can help. No need to be defensive. I say: forget IE6 for wowace.com. Just laugh at the screenshot.
I'll email to our administrator that he has to update the browsers here without any delay... because I want to surf the Ace forums in a proper way. My boss will be quiet happy I guess. :p
Anyway... I didn't want to start a debate on principles about what browsers shall be supported. I'm also fine if it stays like this.
just install chrome :P (it worked at my work where pretty much everything is locked down so you can't do anything) or if you cant put it on a jumpdrive (you could do that with FF too if you want)
But in the real business world, where some of us make our money, IE6 is still there.
But in the business world, my client knows that the majority of his users are on IE6 and that it takes me a lot more time to make things work for them than it takes me to make things work on IE7/FF/Chrome... and he knows that he has to pay me for that extra time. So in the business world, I don't mind taking that extra time to make it work on IE6. But in the "no one is paying me to do this shit" world, fuck IE6!
I'll email to our administrator that he has to update the browsers here without any delay... because I want to surf the Ace forums in a proper way. My boss will be quiet happy I guess. :p
Anyway... I didn't want to start a debate on principles about what browsers shall be supported. I'm also fine if it stays like this.
Could always throw in an "UPDATE YOUR FUCKING BROWSER" Nag if people meander over here with IE6. =p
That would be even more unnecessary annoyance. As has been stated repeatedly in this thread, the business world still uses IE6 predominately, and some of us like to visit here during downtime at work. While I don't mind the site being somewhat buggy, a nag is pushing it over the edge.
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Web developers who need to test IE6 on a regular basis (like me) use virtual machines.
Without looking at it, it sounds like a CSS problem. These things are usually trivial to fix for someone who knows the ins and outs of IE6.
Wow, grats on that. The LOB software I develop still hangs in with 30-60% IE6 usage, even after a large campaign and a lot of support devoted to switching users to Firefox. /wrists
There are people like that? I'm scared
I have to second Belazor though, i don't have any IE6 anymore, and frankly, all other web dev i do (i try to keep it to a minimum, too) is only required to work on IE7.
I know of one issue with the Notifications popup being half-behind the nav bar in IE7, that i couldn't really fix after a few hours of research and testing, so i gave up. (z-index + div elements = nightmare for IE7)
If you can give me hints on how to fix the IE6 issues, please do. Otherwise, i could just disable the JS-magic for IE6 and let them use the default interface.
Heh, yes. I'm one of them.
I'll take a look if I have time.
Here's a shot of how this thread looks in IE6. There isn't even a drop down next to the top Search link. The Search This Thread popup appears way off screen to the right.
Edit:
Download the IE6 app compat VHD images here
Download Virtual PC 2007 here
And the SP1 for VPC here
According to this, IE6 still has 22.3% global browser share. For businesses, the percentage is much higher (I'd venture a guess of 50-80% right now). Luckily it seems this site in particular doesn't get many visits from it.
As someone who has worked in web development, I must strongly disagree with you. When you are developing a website that is intended to be used by the public (as opposed to an internal corporate website) -- especially if it's intended to generate revenue for you -- popularity is everything in deciding whether or not to "support" a specific browser.
However, as stated in my previous post, regardless of whether or not you are "supporting" a specific browser, it's just bad from all kinds of standpoints to prevent a user from using your website because of what hardware and/or software they're using to access it.
The problem here is not IE6, though... the problem is that someone, somewhere (whether it be vB designers or WowAce/Curse designers, I have no idea) thought it would be cool to put 90% of the site's functions in annoying dropdown menus that don't work properly (or even at all, in some cases) without browser-specific scripting. It's very similar to the issue of collapsing nested lists -- the more common but horribly inaccessible technique is to use CSS to hide the list by default and show it via JavaScript when clicked, but the correct (and completely accessible) technique is to show the list by default and hide it via JavaScript when the page loads. The same problems and solutions are relevant to the dropdowns here on the forum.
I'm not sure what you mean by popularity at this point. There's basically three layout engines that are commonly used in web browsers: Gecko (Mozilla's), WebKit (Apple's) and Trident (Microsoft's). A website that works fine in Firefox, will display the same in, let's say, Flock, that's also using Gecko.
Both Gecko and WebKit have a solid implementation of modern web standards. IE6 got an old Trident engine with limited CSS support, from back when websites were primarily tabular.
Because I, personally favor the wowace theme, it's confortable for me. But I'm a big fan of skins for forums xD, so it'd be schwei if additional themes were made that peopel could switch between.
I couldn't've put it better myself. Is it worth all that work? So far all I've heard is a resounding NO
I don't remember exact numbers (ask Big K) but IE6 users are a small minority here. My site, which I'm sure has a very similar userbase, has 3.58% IE6 users. That's less than Chrome (5.63%). Why oh why would someone want to devote more time writing for IE6 than they spend writing for every other browser out there? I sure as hell won't!
*edit* Side note, I wouldn't call that page "global" by any means. It's the browser stats for their site only. Besides that, being a site for web developers, it's not really a good "diverse" sample.
I'll email to our administrator that he has to update the browsers here without any delay... because I want to surf the Ace forums in a proper way. My boss will be quiet happy I guess. :p
Anyway... I didn't want to start a debate on principles about what browsers shall be supported. I'm also fine if it stays like this.
read below. :P
I couldn't have put that better myself. The time it takes to make sure stuff works in IE6 is vastly more than any time I spend actually writing the code to begin with. It's fricking ridiculous. I curse IE6 every day.
Right. Although they do say:
Next:
That's exactly the problem. IE6 really does take 90% of your time. It's a ridiculously bad browser. My point is, if they decide to support IE6, they clearly have a lot of work to do. If they don't want to support it, and they probably shouldn't given the percentage of hits they get, then no problem.
In the context of this web site, no support for IE6 makes sense. But in the real business world, where some of us make our money, IE6 is still there. If anyone wants to support it still, some of us can help. No need to be defensive. I say: forget IE6 for wowace.com. Just laugh at the screenshot.
just install chrome :P (it worked at my work where pretty much everything is locked down so you can't do anything) or if you cant put it on a jumpdrive (you could do that with FF too if you want)
But in the business world, my client knows that the majority of his users are on IE6 and that it takes me a lot more time to make things work for them than it takes me to make things work on IE7/FF/Chrome... and he knows that he has to pay me for that extra time. So in the business world, I don't mind taking that extra time to make it work on IE6. But in the "no one is paying me to do this shit" world, fuck IE6!
Tried http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable?
Amen.