Hoi, Would this be a model to follow ? Thanks, GerardM
Aan u verzonden door GerardM via Google Reader: Norwegian Websites Declare War on Internet Explorer 6 via Wired Top Stories door Michael Calore op 19-2-09 Several prominent websites in Norway are refusing to support the antiquated IE6 browser any longer, and have posted messages to IE6 users urging them to upgrade. The campaign has caught on, and is beginning to spread to other countries.
Dingen die u vanaf hier kunt doen: - Abonneren op Wired Top Stories met Google Reader - Aan de slag met Google Reader om eenvoudig al uw favoriete sites bij te houden
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 4:02 AM, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Would this be a model to follow ? Thanks, GerardM
Aan u verzonden door GerardM via Google Reader: Norwegian Websites Declare War on Internet Explorer 6 via Wired Top Stories door Michael Calore op 19-2-09 Several prominent websites in Norway are refusing to support the antiquated IE6 browser any longer, and have posted messages to IE6 users urging them to upgrade. The campaign has caught on, and is beginning to spread to other countries.
No. Many users are forced to use IE6 because their workplace relies on it for intranet applications, for instance. These users will eventually be forced to upgrade as time moves on, but it's not appropriate for Wikipedia to go out of its way to make their lives any more difficult than they already are. IE6 support is not a major barrier to new features at this point that I'm aware of, so the gain to us would be marginal.
2009/2/20 Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com:
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 4:02 AM, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Would this be a model to follow ? Thanks, GerardM
Aan u verzonden door GerardM via Google Reader: Norwegian Websites Declare War on Internet Explorer 6 via Wired Top Stories door Michael Calore op 19-2-09 Several prominent websites in Norway are refusing to support the antiquated IE6 browser any longer, and have posted messages to IE6 users urging them to upgrade. The campaign has caught on, and is beginning to spread to other countries.
No. Many users are forced to use IE6 because their workplace relies on it for intranet applications, for instance. These users will eventually be forced to upgrade as time moves on, but it's not appropriate for Wikipedia to go out of its way to make their lives any more difficult than they already are. IE6 support is not a major barrier to new features at this point that I'm aware of, so the gain to us would be marginal.
There are different levels of support. We should certainly make sure things fail gracefully for IE6, but a new feature not working on IE6 shouldn't be a reason not to implement it for everyone else. (I believe that is pretty much the current policy already.)
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 5:19 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
There are different levels of support. We should certainly make sure things fail gracefully for IE6, but a new feature not working on IE6 shouldn't be a reason not to implement it for everyone else. (I believe that is pretty much the current policy already.)
It depends on the type of feature. For instance, when implementing different icons for certain filetypes on external links in Monobook, I used the [$=foo] CSS selector, knowing it would fail in IE6, because it's not going to hurt anyone if it does. On the other hand, it would still be unacceptable at this point for a significant new feature not to work in IE6. It still has 20% of the market, by some figures I've seen.
2009/2/20 Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com:
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 5:19 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
There are different levels of support. We should certainly make sure things fail gracefully for IE6, but a new feature not working on IE6 shouldn't be a reason not to implement it for everyone else. (I believe that is pretty much the current policy already.)
It depends on the type of feature. For instance, when implementing different icons for certain filetypes on external links in Monobook, I used the [$=foo] CSS selector, knowing it would fail in IE6, because it's not going to hurt anyone if it does. On the other hand, it would still be unacceptable at this point for a significant new feature not to work in IE6. It still has 20% of the market, by some figures I've seen.
I can't see any significant new features causing a problem that wouldn't be dealt with by the "fail gracefully" condition. As long as adding the feature doesn't make things worse for IE6 users (so they can still read and edit the sites), then there isn't a big problem. Of course, if you can cater to IE6 easily, then there is no reason not to.
Unfortunately, IE6 (and IE7 as well) are problems that all web sites got to live with. IE6 is still used by about 34% of all web users (according to the latest statistics from thecounter.com), so banning those users or not paying attention to problems they might have with certain website elements is pretty bad, especially considering the fact that we have a mission to deliver our content to everyone, regardless of platform or browser. Testing on those platforms is probably not done enough, simply because most developers and editors are using something else than IE.
-- Hay
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 11:50 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/2/20 Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com:
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 5:19 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
There are different levels of support. We should certainly make sure things fail gracefully for IE6, but a new feature not working on IE6 shouldn't be a reason not to implement it for everyone else. (I believe that is pretty much the current policy already.)
It depends on the type of feature. For instance, when implementing different icons for certain filetypes on external links in Monobook, I used the [$=foo] CSS selector, knowing it would fail in IE6, because it's not going to hurt anyone if it does. On the other hand, it would still be unacceptable at this point for a significant new feature not to work in IE6. It still has 20% of the market, by some figures I've seen.
I can't see any significant new features causing a problem that wouldn't be dealt with by the "fail gracefully" condition. As long as adding the feature doesn't make things worse for IE6 users (so they can still read and edit the sites), then there isn't a big problem. Of course, if you can cater to IE6 easily, then there is no reason not to.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
2009/2/20 Hay (Husky) huskyr@gmail.com:
Unfortunately, IE6 (and IE7 as well) are problems that all web sites got to live with. IE6 is still used by about 34% of all web users (according to the latest statistics from thecounter.com), so banning those users or not paying attention to problems they might have with certain website elements is pretty bad, especially considering the fact that we have a mission to deliver our content to everyone, regardless of platform or browser. Testing on those platforms is probably not done enough, simply because most developers and editors are using something else than IE.
Are the browser stats for Wikimedia anywhere?
- d.
On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:50:41 +0100, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/2/20 Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com:
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 5:19 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
There are different levels of support. We should certainly make sure things fail gracefully for IE6, but a new feature not working on IE6 shouldn't be a reason not to implement it for everyone else. (I believe that is pretty much the current policy already.)
It depends on the type of feature. For instance, when implementing different icons for certain filetypes on external links in Monobook, I used the [$=foo] CSS selector, knowing it would fail in IE6, because it's not going to hurt anyone if it does. On the other hand, it would still be unacceptable at this point for a significant new feature not to work in IE6. It still has 20% of the market, by some figures I've seen.
I can't see any significant new features causing a problem that wouldn't be dealt with by the "fail gracefully" condition. As long as adding the feature doesn't make things worse for IE6 users (so they can still read and edit the sites), then there isn't a big problem. Of course, if you can cater to IE6 easily, then there is no reason not to.
Actualy there is one big reason not to: As long as people continue to carter for IE6 then less computer savy users will see no reason to upgrade because "it still works". I believe that's precicely the reason it's market share remains fairly high, and why web developers still feel they must continue cartering to it, and as long as they still carter to it... Well let's just say that unless a initiative like this gain some traction everyone will be stuck "having" to support IE6 untill all the old computers out there break down and die and are replaced by new ones that doesn't have IE6 pre-installed.
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Sherool jamydlan@online.no wrote:
On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:50:41 +0100, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/2/20 Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.comSimetrical%2Bwikilist@gmail.com :
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 5:19 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
There are different levels of support. We should certainly make sure things fail gracefully for IE6, but a new feature not working on IE6 shouldn't be a reason not to implement it for everyone else. (I believe that is pretty much the current policy already.)
It depends on the type of feature. For instance, when implementing different icons for certain filetypes on external links in Monobook, I used the [$=foo] CSS selector, knowing it would fail in IE6, because it's not going to hurt anyone if it does. On the other hand, it would still be unacceptable at this point for a significant new feature not to work in IE6. It still has 20% of the market, by some figures I've seen.
I can't see any significant new features causing a problem that wouldn't be dealt with by the "fail gracefully" condition. As long as adding the feature doesn't make things worse for IE6 users (so they can still read and edit the sites), then there isn't a big problem. Of course, if you can cater to IE6 easily, then there is no reason not to.
Actualy there is one big reason not to: As long as people continue to carter for IE6 then less computer savy users will see no reason to upgrade because "it still works". I believe that's precicely the reason it's market share remains fairly high, and why web developers still feel they must continue cartering to it, and as long as they still carter to it... Well let's just say that unless a initiative like this gain some traction everyone will be stuck "having" to support IE6 untill all the old computers out there break down and die and are replaced by new ones that doesn't have IE6 pre-installed.
-- [[:en:User:Sherool]]
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
I would be willing to bet the vast majority of IE6 users left are on corporate networks as mentioned above, and have little to no control over what browser they use. At my former job, XP and IE6 were the standard supported platforms, and they had given no indication of wishing to change this anytime soon.
For what it's worth, I have a feeling end user services wasn't going to change their mind about what browser to set as standard just because some people complained that Wikipedia told them to change. Upgrading an enterprise installation must have a good cost/benefit ratio, and it just hasn't hit that point yet (from an EUS standpoint), or you'd see more institutions finally dropping IE6.
-Chad
2009/2/20 Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com:
I would be willing to bet the vast majority of IE6 users left are on corporate networks as mentioned above, and have little to no control over what browser they use. At my former job, XP and IE6 were the standard supported platforms, and they had given no indication of wishing to change this anytime soon.
If I'm reading this [1] right, they can't wait too long - Microsoft won't be supporting IE6 past July 2010. Using IE6 without security updates would be a very bad plan! Given the end of support isn't that far away (assuming they don't extend it), we should probably continue supporting it until then. Once Microsoft stop supporting it, I think it's completely reasonable for us to stop too.
1. http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps#Internet_Explorer
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 2:02 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/2/20 Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com:
I would be willing to bet the vast majority of IE6 users left are on corporate networks as mentioned above, and have little to no control over what browser they use. At my former job, XP and IE6 were the standard supported platforms, and they had given no indication of wishing to change this anytime soon.
If I'm reading this [1] right, they can't wait too long - Microsoft won't be supporting IE6 past July 2010. Using IE6 without security updates would be a very bad plan! Given the end of support isn't that far away (assuming they don't extend it), we should probably continue supporting it until then. Once Microsoft stop supporting it, I think it's completely reasonable for us to stop too.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
I know a lot of shops are skipping the Vista upgrade with 7 on the way. They might be willing to hang on to a slightly-outdated product that just works until they get the new OS rather than pushing an IE update so late in their OS cycle. That being said: I think the number of IE6 users will drop yet again when Windows 7 comes out. But this is all conjecture.
TBH: The 2010 date might not be a bad one to target for IE legacy support. When the company doesn't support it, we shouldn't bother either. At that point, people who are using IE6 are just too far behind the curve to be bothered with. If we kept this "must support it" mentality forever, we'd have never made it past <table> and <font>.
All browsers die eventually, it's our job to kill support around the same time. Not while there's still a good percentage using it (and 20% is a fair chunk), but rather when it's practically un-used anyway.
-Chad
2009/2/20 Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com:
TBH: The 2010 date might not be a bad one to target for IE legacy support. When the company doesn't support it, we shouldn't bother either. At that point, people who are using IE6 are just too far behind the curve to be bothered with. If we kept this "must support it" mentality forever, we'd have never made it past <table> and <font>.
Don't forget <marquee><blink></blink><marquee> - those were the golden days of web design!
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 2:27 PM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
All browsers die eventually, it's our job to kill support around the same time. Not while there's still a good percentage using it (and 20% is a fair chunk), but rather when it's practically un-used anyway.
This is precisely it. We will cease to support IE6 when it's no longer used by a significant percentage of our users. Not when we think its users should upgrade, not when Microsoft thinks its users should upgrade, not when some militant anti-Microsoft brigade thinks its users should upgrade -- but rather when users *have* *already* upgraded.
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 4:37 PM, Tei oscar.vives@gmail.com wrote:
It make some sense. Internet Explorer is like a "webmaster tax", where the webmasters have to dedicate the 60% of his work to fix IE bugs.
That's a ridiculously gross exaggeration. In the particular case of MediaWiki, the real work in making us IE6-compatible was done long ago. The ongoing cost of IE6 support is fairly close to zero. Only the occasional feature is complicated by its lack of selector support or whatnot.
A campaing to upgrade browsers (not only IE ,but also Netscape, Opera, Firefox, etc...) is a good thing for the Internet
It's slightly good for most users (very slightly in Wikipedia's case), and *very* bad for the large minority that still uses IE6. We are just not going to ignore a fifth or more of our users, period. To do so would be completely irresponsible. There would most definitely not be a net benefit to users, only to developers.
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Sherool jamydlan@online.no wrote:
Actualy there is one big reason not to: As long as people continue to carter for IE6 then less computer savy users will see no reason to upgrade because "it still works". I believe that's precicely the reason it's market share remains fairly high, and why web developers still feel they must continue cartering to it, and as long as they still carter to it... Well let's just say that unless a initiative like this gain some traction everyone will be stuck "having" to support IE6 untill all the old computers out there break down and die and are replaced by new ones that doesn't have IE6 pre-installed.
Right, that is the case. People will continue to run ie6 until their computers break and are replaced by computers that come with ie7. If you put a banner explaining to people that they should upgrade etc, you might get a few people to, but mostly you will just clutter the screen with meaningless information for people that can't upgrade. (either due to being in a controlled environment, or more likely limited technical knowledge)
The act of upgrading a browser is beyond the comprehension of many users unfortunately. (what is a browser, is at&t my browser now, google?) Clearly if they are running any updates at all they have already been badgered by microsoft to update to IE7 and given a button that will do it for them, they've ignore that, why would they listen to Wikipedia's more complex instructions?
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 9:19 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
There are different levels of support. We should certainly make sure things fail gracefully for IE6, but a new feature not working on IE6 shouldn't be a reason not to implement it for everyone else. (I believe that is pretty much the current policy already.)
If some new major feature is added that a given old browser doesn't support, a banner message could be displayed akin to the one Brion put in place recently for mobile users not using the mobile gateway.
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 3:19 PM, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
If some new major feature is added that a given old browser doesn't support, a banner message could be displayed akin to the one Brion put in place recently for mobile users not using the mobile gateway.
Hmm.. so anytime you visit Wikipedia from a pc on your work with IE6 that you can't control you see an ugly banner on the top urging you to upgrade your browser, even though you are not in control of that? Seems pretty unfriendly to me...
-- Hay
On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:16:06 +0100, Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 4:02 AM, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Would this be a model to follow ? Thanks, GerardM
Aan u verzonden door GerardM via Google Reader: Norwegian Websites Declare War on Internet Explorer 6 via Wired Top Stories door Michael Calore op 19-2-09 Several prominent websites in Norway are refusing to support the antiquated IE6 browser any longer, and have posted messages to IE6 users urging them to upgrade. The campaign has caught on, and is beginning to spread to other countries.
No. Many users are forced to use IE6 because their workplace relies on it for intranet applications, for instance. These users will eventually be forced to upgrade as time moves on, but it's not appropriate for Wikipedia to go out of its way to make their lives any more difficult than they already are. IE6 support is not a major barrier to new features at this point that I'm aware of, so the gain to us would be marginal.
The Norwegian sites in question still "work" in IE6, they just urge users to upgrade and have stopped "wasting time" implementing hacks to make new features still work in IE6.
The argument is that the people who still use IE6 now are not likely to ever change on their own because "it still works". It is fairly trivial to make most Intranet applications work in at least IE7, most IT departments are just plain lazy when it comes to implementing new technology as long as the old stuff "works" (and I can understand that to some extent, if the old stuff does what it's supposed to why waste time and money to upgrade just for the sake of upgrading, but at some point you have to bite the bullet or be left in the stoneage). So the point of the campaign is to show people that IE6 doesn't "just work" anymore, thus creating an actual reason to upgrade.
If enough sites follow that model I'm pretty sure you'll see the market share of IE6 start droppign faily fast as people call computer savy friends to help them finaly upgrade or IT departments are presured into upgrading to IE7 or allow FireFox, Opera or other alternate browsers to be installed (for example I do have to use IE6 for some ancient Intranet stuff at work, but I use Opera for everyting else).
I do believe that once IE6 (not to mention IE5) is dead and burried the web will be a better place, so IMHO we should not ask "what do we gain from this", but instead "do it for the betterment of humanity" (pompous enough for you ;P).
I'm not saying we should stop making the site work for IE6 users, but I don't think a browser spesific "site notice" urging them to upgrade would be such a bad thing.
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 9:36 AM, Sherool jamydlan@online.no wrote:
The argument is that the people who still use IE6 now are not likely to ever change on their own because "it still works".
That argument is evidently wrong, given the number of people still using IE5 and NN4 (i.e., basically none). Eventually people are going to be forced to upgrade to a new version of Windows because XP doesn't support the new-fangled something-or-other that everyone needs to have, and that means a new version of IE. It's not really possible to run ancient operating systems forever unless you're extremely fixed in your ways -- for instance, Windows 95 doesn't support USB. XP is still usable for the time being, but sooner or later almost everyone is going to need to upgrade to support new applications or hardware.
Regardless, it is not Wikimedia's business to tell people what operating systems or browsers to use. Telling people to switch browsers is self-indulgent laziness on the part of web developers who don't want to support IE6. MediaWiki is not going to nag people to change browsers, period.
I do believe that once IE6 (not to mention IE5) is dead and burried the web will be a better place, so IMHO we should not ask "what do we gain from this", but instead "do it for the betterment of humanity" (pompous enough for you ;P).
Wikimedia's goal is not to better humanity in some unspecified way. It's to disseminate free knowledge. Pestering users who probably can't fix the problem does nothing to advance that goal. If we're going to try moralizing our users, why don't we go ahead and nag our users to ditch IE entirely and switch to Firefox? IE7 is pretty bug-ridden too. Or hey, why not try getting them all to switch to Linux?
It's not our business.
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 3:50 PM, Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com wrote:
Wikimedia's goal is not to better humanity in some unspecified way. It's to disseminate free knowledge. Pestering users who probably can't fix the problem does nothing to advance that goal. If we're going to try moralizing our users, why don't we go ahead and nag our users to ditch IE entirely and switch to Firefox? IE7 is pretty bug-ridden too. Or hey, why not try getting them all to switch to Linux?
Exactly. Also, in many ways upgrading to IE7 doesn't solve many problems at all (except for some very obvious CSS bugs) because it's still riddled with bugs and wrong implementations of W3C specs, especially on the Javascript implementation. We just have to live with the fact that web development means spending 30% of your time on writing hacks for IE6 and IE7 (and probably for IE8 too).
-- Hay
On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 10:02 AM, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote: ..
Aan u verzonden door GerardM via Google Reader: Norwegian Websites Declare War on Internet Explorer 6 via Wired Top Stories door Michael Calore op 19-2-09 Several prominent websites in Norway are refusing to support the antiquated IE6 browser any longer, and have posted messages to IE6 users urging them to upgrade. The campaign has caught on, and is beginning to spread to other countries.
It make some sense. Internet Explorer is like a "webmaster tax", where the webmasters have to dedicate the 60% of his work to fix IE bugs. Another cost his hidden in the oportunity lost because IE "ban" features. Like, you will not use usefull features that can save time and enhance the websites, because are not supported by IE, and writting gratefull degradation code for it kill the original "time saved".
A campaing to upgrade browsers (not only IE ,but also Netscape, Opera, Firefox, etc...) is a good thing for the Internet, and what is good for Internet is good for Wikipedia. A cool way could be to suggest a user of a broken and old version of IE to upgrade to the next IE, the user of a broken version of Netscape to the next Netscape, etc.. that way you are not doing "politicis", but just tryiing to make internet a better world.
Since Wikipedia don't have banners, I don't see "space" to do that in wikipedia. but others sites may have a logical space to communicate this to his users. After all... "Friends don't let friends use IE" is exactly how Firefox spread.
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