"Google phases out support for IE6" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8488751.stm
It's only a small step, but it is one more step towards the end of IE6 and the nightmare of supporting it!
On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 6:58 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
"Google phases out support for IE6" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8488751.stm
It's only a small step, but it is one more step towards the end of IE6 and the nightmare of supporting it!
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
IE6 really is holding everyone back. But at such a high market share (still!), it's still worth providing services to these users--dear lord lets not start using the "Optimized for IEx/NNy" banners from days gone by. We've recently dropped the IE5[1] and 5.5[2] stylesheets, since their combined market share is less than a percent. Of course we shouldn't bend over backwards to help IE6, but they can't be ignored, yet.
As has been stated in many places by many people: IE6's penetration remains mostly in corporate environments, where users don't have a choice in browsers and the company doesn't want risk breaking working web applications. The fact that Microsoft is supporting it for another 4 years--it should've been shelved already--doesn't improve matters either.
-Chad
On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 9:37 AM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 6:58 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
"Google phases out support for IE6" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8488751.stm
It's only a small step, but it is one more step towards the end of IE6 and the nightmare of supporting it!
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
IE6 really is holding everyone back. But at such a high market share (still!), it's still worth providing services to these users--dear lord lets not start using the "Optimized for IEx/NNy" banners from days gone by. We've recently dropped the IE5[1] and 5.5[2] stylesheets, since their combined market share is less than a percent. Of course we shouldn't bend over backwards to help IE6, but they can't be ignored, yet.
As has been stated in many places by many people: IE6's penetration remains mostly in corporate environments, where users don't have a choice in browsers and the company doesn't want risk breaking working web applications. The fact that Microsoft is supporting it for another 4 years--it should've been shelved already--doesn't improve matters either.
-Chad
Whoops, haven't had any caffeine yet this morning, left the two links off here. They're:
[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/61083 and [2] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/61085
-Chad
On 30 January 2010 14:42, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
Whoops, haven't had any caffeine yet this morning, left the two links off here. They're:
[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/61083
Interestingly, the revision summary for that revision gives a link to general browser stats, rather than Wikimedia browser stats, which are obviously the relevant ones (although we have such high reach that there isn't a large difference). We have stats from Nov 2009 (http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportClients.htm) - were those generated by a script that could be run again? Getting some trends could help us work out when to ditch IE6. The recent Google/China/IE story has received lots of coverage, including the authorities in France and Germany advising people to ditch IE entirely, so IE6 usage has probably shown a noticeable dip.
On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 30 January 2010 14:42, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
Whoops, haven't had any caffeine yet this morning, left the two links off here. They're:
[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/61083
Interestingly, the revision summary for that revision gives a link to general browser stats, rather than Wikimedia browser stats, which are obviously the relevant ones (although we have such high reach that there isn't a large difference). We have stats from Nov 2009 (http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportClients.htm) - were those generated by a script that could be run again? Getting some trends could help us work out when to ditch IE6. The recent Google/China/IE story has received lots of coverage, including the authorities in France and Germany advising people to ditch IE entirely, so IE6 usage has probably shown a noticeable dip.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Right, I did link to a general report, but it's only because I couldn't find the Wikimedia stats offhand and I knew they were more or less on par with the wider picture.
And more data here would be helpful. Are browsers not listed there not tracked, or were they just too small of a percentage to include? I'd love to know what the numbers for IE for Mac (5.2 is the latest I believe) and Opera 6/7. These have custom stylesheets that can be phased out as well.
-Chad
On 30 January 2010 15:46, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
And more data here would be helpful. Are browsers not listed there not tracked, or were they just too small of a percentage to include? I'd love to know what the numbers for IE for Mac (5.2 is the latest I believe) and Opera 6/7. These have custom stylesheets that can be phased out as well.
I don't know, but the OS stats show only 6.75% of hits come from Macs, and I doubt many of them are using a browser that hasn't had an update since 2003.
http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/articles/internet_explorer_macintosh.php
This is the only page I can find with any browser stats for IE for Mac and it shows that that domain receives less than 0.05% of hits from the browser (that was 6 months ago, but the graph shows that it has pretty much levelled out - varying between about 0.01% and 0.03%).
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 2:46 AM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
... And more data here would be helpful. Are browsers not listed there not tracked, or were they just too small of a percentage to include? I'd love to know what the numbers for IE for Mac (5.2 is the latest I believe) and Opera 6/7. These have custom stylesheets that can be phased out as well.
An important distinction is that IE for Mac users on Mac OS (classic) don't have the copious upgrade options available to IE 5.5 users on Windows.
Most IE5.2 users should have upgraded to iCab. Do we have good iCab support?
What are the remaining browsers available for Classic Mac OS users? Classilla is the only browser that I can quickly see is still maintained.
-- John Vandenberg
On 31 January 2010 05:07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
An important distinction is that IE for Mac users on Mac OS (classic) don't have the copious upgrade options available to IE 5.5 users on Windows.
I don't think we need to worry about Mac OS classic: http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm
If I'm reading that right, only 0.02% of users are using Mac OS classic (although I suppose there could be some more that have been grouped into "Other", but that won't be many).
Most IE5.2 users should have upgraded to iCab. Do we have good iCab support?
IE to iCab isn't really an upgrade... it's a completely different browser, isn't it?
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 8:28 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 31 January 2010 05:07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
An important distinction is that IE for Mac users on Mac OS (classic) don't have the copious upgrade options available to IE 5.5 users on Windows.
I don't think we need to worry about Mac OS classic: http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm
If I'm reading that right, only 0.02% of users are using Mac OS classic (although I suppose there could be some more that have been grouped into "Other", but that won't be many).
That is still at least 1000 pageviews per month. If it does not degrade gracefully, we would be telling them to buy a new computer in order to view Wikipedia. How many contributors will be lost in the process? Only developers can tell us how many of those 1000 pageviews were logged in users.
We create projects for languages who have only ~6000 _in total_ (e.g. Creek language).
I don't see any IE 5.1 or 5.2 in this list:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportClients.htm
Most IE5.2 users should have upgraded to iCab. Do we have good iCab support?
IE to iCab isn't really an upgrade... it's a completely different browser, isn't it?
iCab was a supported browser long after IE for Mac was dropped.
-- John Vandenberg
On 31 January 2010 20:49, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
If I'm reading that right, only 0.02% of users are using Mac OS classic (although I suppose there could be some more that have been grouped into "Other", but that won't be many).
That is still at least 1000 pageviews per month. If it does not degrade gracefully, we would be telling them to buy a new computer in order to view Wikipedia. How many contributors will be lost in the process? Only developers can tell us how many of those 1000 pageviews were logged in users.
1000 page views a month over the whole of Wikimedia is as close to nothing as makes no odds. That could be just a single user.
Most IE5.2 users should have upgraded to iCab. Do we have good iCab support?
IE to iCab isn't really an upgrade... it's a completely different browser, isn't it?
iCab was a supported browser long after IE for Mac was dropped.
Sure, but it's a completely different browser. "Upgrade" means to go to a later version of the same software, not a later version of completely different software.
That is still at least 1000 pageviews per month. If it does not degrade gracefully, we would be telling them to buy a new computer in order to view Wikipedia.
This is completely wrong. You do know that it is possible to install new software? The problem has been mentioned several times. It is most likely environments where the user does not have control over installed software.
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 8:57 PM, Daniel Schwen lists@schwen.de wrote:
That is still at least 1000 pageviews per month. If it does not degrade gracefully, we would be telling them to buy a new computer in order to view Wikipedia.
This is completely wrong. You do know that it is possible to install new software? The problem has been mentioned several times. It is most likely environments where the user does not have control over installed software.
Even then, there is http://www.askvg.com/download-mozilla-firefox-30-portable-edition-no-installation-needed/
Magnus
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 9:36 AM, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 8:57 PM, Daniel Schwen lists@schwen.de wrote:
That is still at least 1000 pageviews per month. If it does not degrade gracefully, we would be telling them to buy a new computer in order to view Wikipedia.
This is completely wrong. You do know that it is possible to install new software? The problem has been mentioned several times. It is most likely environments where the user does not have control over installed software.
Even then, there is http://www.askvg.com/download-mozilla-firefox-30-portable-edition-no-installation-needed/
Excuse me? please read the earlier posts in this thread.
I am talking about IE for Mac Classic.
iCab support? Is Classilla a sensible replacement for people still using IE for Mac? etc.
-- John Vandenberg
This entire discussion about support for IE 5 Mac is pointless. IE for Mac used a completely different rendering engine than IE for Windows and was actually (pretty-much) standards compliant. We don't need to worry about what browser people on Mac Classic should migrate to for viewing Wikipedia. I'm reasonably confident that Wikipedia would render fine in IE 5 for Mac (or iCab, or Classilla).
Ryan Kaldari
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 5:34 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 9:36 AM, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 8:57 PM, Daniel Schwen lists@schwen.de wrote:
That is still at least 1000 pageviews per month. If it does not degrade gracefully, we would be telling them to buy a new computer in order to view Wikipedia.
This is completely wrong. You do know that it is possible to install new software? The problem has been mentioned several times. It is most likely environments where the user does not have control over installed software.
Even then, there is http://www.askvg.com/download-mozilla-firefox-30-portable-edition-no-installation-needed/
Excuse me? please read the earlier posts in this thread.
I am talking about IE for Mac Classic.
iCab support? Is Classilla a sensible replacement for people still using IE for Mac? etc.
-- John Vandenberg
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Ryan Kaldari kaldari@gmail.com wrote:
This entire discussion about support for IE 5 Mac is pointless. IE for Mac used a completely different rendering engine than IE for Windows and was actually (pretty-much) standards compliant. We don't need to worry about what browser people on Mac Classic should migrate to for viewing Wikipedia. I'm reasonably confident that Wikipedia would render fine in IE 5 for Mac (or iCab, or Classilla).
In this thread, Chad suggested that the IE for Mac stylesheet could be phased out.
-- John Vandenberg
I would definitely agree with that. We may be the last site on the Internet to customize our CSS for Mac IE :)
Ryan Kaldari
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 5:53 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Ryan Kaldari kaldari@gmail.com wrote:
This entire discussion about support for IE 5 Mac is pointless. IE for Mac used a completely different rendering engine than IE for Windows and was actually (pretty-much) standards compliant. We don't need to worry about what browser people on Mac Classic should migrate to for viewing Wikipedia. I'm reasonably confident that Wikipedia would render fine in IE 5 for Mac (or iCab, or Classilla).
In this thread, Chad suggested that the IE for Mac stylesheet could be phased out.
-- John Vandenberg
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 6:34 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Even then, there is http://www.askvg.com/download-mozilla-firefox-30-portable-edition-no-installation-needed/
Excuse me? please read the earlier posts in this thread.
I am talking about IE for Mac Classic.
iCab support? Is Classilla a sensible replacement for people still using IE for Mac? etc.
I couldn't get classzilla running on a blue and white G3 running 9.0.2 when I tried it a couple months ago.
I have a couple of these systems for driving some embedded hardware that never got moved to anything more modern, they'd be perfectly adequate systems for webbrowsing if you could get a workably up to date webbrowser on them: The IE the OS ships with hard locks the machine on apple.com of all places! I was only bothering to attempt this because I wanted to get a screenshot of cortado playing videos on something very old, and I only spent an hour or so on it. (Wikipedia, OTOH, worked fine with the IE that comes with the OS on those systems)
But seriously. Outright *excluding* these old things shouldn't even be a consideration. Even a very small audience (like 0.02%) is tens of thousands of readers. Mediawiki (and the WMF deployment) already has many features which don't work / don't work well on fairly old systems, so that bridge has already been crossed, but outright dropping support for basic use?
Who said anything about dropping support for basic use? I would be surprised if you could tell much difference on Mac IE between Wikipedia with the custom stylesheet and without. But perhaps you could give it a try and report back to us, rather than relying on my wild speculations :)
Ryan Kaldari
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 8:27 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 6:34 PM, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
Even then, there is http://www.askvg.com/download-mozilla-firefox-30-portable-edition-no-installation-needed/
Excuse me? please read the earlier posts in this thread.
I am talking about IE for Mac Classic.
iCab support? Is Classilla a sensible replacement for people still using IE for Mac? etc.
I couldn't get classzilla running on a blue and white G3 running 9.0.2 when I tried it a couple months ago.
I have a couple of these systems for driving some embedded hardware that never got moved to anything more modern, they'd be perfectly adequate systems for webbrowsing if you could get a workably up to date webbrowser on them: The IE the OS ships with hard locks the machine on apple.com of all places! I was only bothering to attempt this because I wanted to get a screenshot of cortado playing videos on something very old, and I only spent an hour or so on it. (Wikipedia, OTOH, worked fine with the IE that comes with the OS on those systems)
But seriously. Outright *excluding* these old things shouldn't even be a consideration. Even a very small audience (like 0.02%) is tens of thousands of readers. Mediawiki (and the WMF deployment) already has many features which don't work / don't work well on fairly old systems, so that bridge has already been crossed, but outright dropping support for basic use?
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 2:37 PM, Ryan Kaldari kaldari@gmail.com wrote:
Who said anything about dropping support for basic use? I would be surprised if you could tell much difference on Mac IE between Wikipedia with the custom stylesheet and without. But perhaps you could give it a try and report back to us, rather than relying on my wild speculations :)
Is this file unused?
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/skins/monobook/IEMacF...
It seems that the IE for Mac style is littered through:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/skins/monobook/main.c...
... with an interesting comment:
/* ** IE/Mac fixes, hope to find a validating way to move this ** to a separate stylesheet. This would work but doesn't validate: ** @import("IEMacFixes.css"); */
Would it be acceptable to use a conditional include?
http://stopdesign.com/examples/ie5mac-bpf/
Alternatively, we could load the stylesheet at runtime with JavaScript. That approach is already being used for IE specific JavaScript fixes.
-- John Vandenberg
What about creating an "monobo'oldies" theme for them? I mean, move current stuff to oldies, and drop elders support from monobook.
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 9:27 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
But seriously. Outright *excluding* these old things shouldn't even be a consideration. Even a very small audience (like 0.02%) is tens of thousands of readers. Mediawiki (and the WMF deployment) already has many features which don't work / don't work well on fairly old systems, so that bridge has already been crossed, but outright dropping support for basic use?
I have to say, my knee-jerk reaction was "Yes, let's drop IE5 support already", but on consideration I have to agree with you. We shouldn't feel obliged to go out of our way to ensure these browsers still work, but as long as they do mostly work right now, there's no reason to drop support. I've confirmed that with IE50Fixes.css, Monobook is still perfectly usable in IE5 (using ies4linux), but without it, the page collapses to an unusable mess.
I don't think reducing <head> clutter is enough of a reason to drop support here. The clutter will go away anyway if/when Vector becomes the default skin -- then IE5 users can still use Monobook. Why not let them?
On the other hand, IEMacFixes.css is unused, so I've deleted it in r61787. We do have IE Mac fixes (and I think also fixes for other IE versions) in Monobook's main.css using selector hacks and such, but they're basically harmless, so let's leave them. Let's also re-add the 5.0 and 5.5 stylesheets, unless someone has a better reason than saving two lines in the <head> until we switch to Vector.
On 1 February 2010 14:54, Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think reducing <head> clutter is enough of a reason to drop support here. The clutter will go away anyway if/when Vector becomes the default skin -- then IE5 users can still use Monobook. Why not let them?
It's not just the clutter, though, it's the effort of maintaining it. The more browsers you support, the more browsers you have to test changes in.
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It's not just the clutter, though, it's the effort of maintaining it.
I don't suggest we maintain it. Just leave it alone. If other changes happen to cause IE5 to break, then remove it, but don't remove *existing* IE5 support as long as IE5 still happens to work with no extra effort on our part.
On 1 February 2010 15:43, Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It's not just the clutter, though, it's the effort of maintaining it.
I don't suggest we maintain it. Just leave it alone. If other changes happen to cause IE5 to break, then remove it, but don't remove *existing* IE5 support as long as IE5 still happens to work with no extra effort on our part.
Yes. If someone actually notices something bitrotting and they tell us, that's excellent. If they don't, there you go.
That said, there must be *someone* on this list bloody-minded enough to test Wikipedia in every possible browser and file bugs and patches accordingly ...
- d.
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 1:28 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 1 February 2010 15:43, Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It's not just the clutter, though, it's the effort of maintaining it.
I don't suggest we maintain it. Just leave it alone. If other changes happen to cause IE5 to break, then remove it, but don't remove *existing* IE5 support as long as IE5 still happens to work with no extra effort on our part.
Yes. If someone actually notices something bitrotting and they tell us, that's excellent. If they don't, there you go.
That said, there must be *someone* on this list bloody-minded enough to test Wikipedia in every possible browser and file bugs and patches accordingly ...
It shouldn't be a question of bloddy-mindedness. The rotting of support for a single browser version would potential shut out many tens of thousands of users. It's something worth dedicating some resources to.
Simply verifying functionality with all the *popular* browsers and platforms is already burdensome. Doing it well (and consistently) requires some infrastructure, such as a collection of virtualized client machines. Once that kind of infrastructure is in place and well oiled the marginal cost of adding a few more test cases should not be especially great.
The core of Wikipedia functionality is plain text with a smattering of images in common formats. I can think of no reason that this basic reading functionality for IE 5.x and the like should go away for the foreseeable future but if nothing else, knowing that it doesn't work would be a good thing.
On 1 February 2010 19:46, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 1:28 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
That said, there must be *someone* on this list bloody-minded enough to test Wikipedia in every possible browser and file bugs and patches accordingly ...
It shouldn't be a question of bloddy-mindedness. The rotting of support for a single browser version would potential shut out many tens of thousands of users. It's something worth dedicating some resources to.
I didn't mean "bloody-minded" as a bad thing - I'm presently compiling Xorg from source on various virtualised OSes just for the fun of it and noting that no-one at all could have done a complete Xorg compile in the last year or they would have noticed all the breakages ...
I do think that a horribly under-resourced open source project (most of them) can reasonably say "OK, if people want xxx supported, please step forward" and, a year later, saying "OK, zero people came forward to fix xxx, out it goes." It's a pretty powerful and conclusive argument.
Simply verifying functionality with all the *popular* browsers and platforms is already burdensome. Doing it well (and consistently) requires some infrastructure, such as a collection of virtualized client machines. Once that kind of infrastructure is in place and well oiled the marginal cost of adding a few more test cases should not be especially great.
This sort of automated test harness must have been built already many times for other sites.
Presumably someone with MacOS X 10.4 PowerPC can run IE-Mac in Classic for the sake of this. Anyone? Anyone? That is the necessary condition to solve the problem presented by this thread, and also the sufficient one.
- d.
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 21:06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I didn't mean "bloody-minded" as a bad thing - I'm presently compiling Xorg from source on various virtualised OSes just for the fun of it and noting that no-one at all could have done a complete Xorg compile in the last year or they would have noticed all the breakages ...
I do think that a horribly under-resourced open source project (most of them) can reasonably say "OK, if people want xxx supported, please step forward" and, a year later, saying "OK, zero people came forward to fix xxx, out it goes." It's a pretty powerful and conclusive argument.
Keith Packard described an interesting approach to this problem (in the context of X, no less!), quoted e.g. on http://lwn.net/Articles/354408/ :
'Keith has figured out a fail-safe method for the removal of cruft from an old code base. The steps, he said, are these:
1. Publish a protocol specification and promise that there will be long-term support.
2. Realize failure.
3. "Accidentally" break things in the code.
4. Let a few years go by, and note that nobody has complained about the broken features.
5. Remove the code since it is obviously not being used.
Under this model, the XCMS subsystem was broken for five years without any complaints. The DGA code has recently been seen to have been broken for as long. The technique works, so Keith encouraged the audience to "go forth and introduce bugs."'
Maybe we should do the same - introduce bugs that will cause subtle breakages on browsers we'd rather not go out of our way to specifically support any longer, and see if anyone'll actually complain. :)
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 6:31 PM, Schneelocke schneelocke@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe we should do the same - introduce bugs that will cause subtle breakages on browsers we'd rather not go out of our way to specifically support any longer, and see if anyone'll actually complain. :)
People are really bad at complaining, especially web users. We've had prolonged obvious glitches which must have effected hundreds of thousands of people and maybe we get a couple of reports.
Users appear to just hit the back button and move on, either they don't care at all or they do care but assume it will be fixed without their intervention.
What you propose is not a good policy, at least not in this application space.
On 1 February 2010 23:44, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 6:31 PM, Schneelocke schneelocke@gmail.com wrote:
Maybe we should do the same - introduce bugs that will cause subtle breakages on browsers we'd rather not go out of our way to specifically support any longer, and see if anyone'll actually complain. :)
People are really bad at complaining, especially web users. We've had prolonged obvious glitches which must have effected hundreds of thousands of people and maybe we get a couple of reports. Users appear to just hit the back button and move on, either they don't care at all or they do care but assume it will be fixed without their intervention. What you propose is not a good policy, at least not in this application space.
Indeed. It works for X because a lot of the cruft was corporate bad ideas from the early 1990s that they foolishly committed to supporting forever, including things that *never worked*, *ever*. Breaking them proved that nobody cared. The Xorg crew are desperately trying to drag a horrible old codebase into the 21st century. The only reason your Linux laptop works reasonably reliably is that the X codebase is very seasoned, not that it's not horrible ;-)
Nevertheless, in our space it does require the people who advocate support to do the testing and complaining when it doesn't work, because, observably, no-one else is going to. As I said: applied bloody-mindedness.
- d.
On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 00:44, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
People are really bad at complaining, especially web users. We've had prolonged obvious glitches which must have effected hundreds of thousands of people and maybe we get a couple of reports.
For Average Joe and Jane it usually isn't obvious what to do when something's broken. I've observed people using really broken websites (fallen apart layout, broken menus) and never "report" but complain to their colleagues. I second that people are bad at reporting problems, and I must add that computer people are usually bad to get the complaints and fix them. ;-) I guess if you have a problem and you know someone who can do something about it, then it'll get fixed, otherwise it _may_ get fixed, one day or other. [I've experienced this latter problem regarding email config bugs and [not] having them fixed.]
Nevertheless I wouldn't miss any IE features, but then again I'm an anti m$ fascist by genetics. ;-)
g
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 6:44 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
People are really bad at complaining, especially web users. We've had prolonged obvious glitches which must have effected hundreds of thousands of people and maybe we get a couple of reports.
Like this:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7906
October 17, 2006: All hangul (Korean) usernames stop working. November 13, 2006: Someone files a bug. November 13, 2006: A developer asks for clarification. November 14, 2006: The user provides enough clarification to allow the bug to be easily tracked down and fixed by any developer.
Silence. New Korean Wikipedia users create only ASCII usernames for seven months.
May 7, 2007: The original reporter provides a one-line patch that fixes the problem, spending who knows how much effort to come up with it. May 8, 2007: Developer commits the fix, which ends up being two lines for good measure.
If we had more people complaining more loudly, we'd have fixed that within a day or two. But . . .
On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 7:13 PM, Tisza Gerő gtisza@gmail.com wrote:
By the same line of thought, they can use nostalgia or some other old skin.
No, that's not the same line of thought. There is a difference between deliberately breaking Monobook when it currently works, on the one hand; and not putting in the effort to get Vector to work in the first place, on the other. The latter is entirely reasonable, given IE5's market share. The former is not reasonable.
At any rate, few people know there are skins in the first place, and even fewer would be willing to bother with them
Sure. But those people are not worth the effort to get new skins like Vector to support IE5. Spending a few hours getting basic functionality for a few hundred thousand IE5 users, rather than spending those few hours adding a minor feature for a billion people, is not reasonable. Especially since the IE5 users probably have access to other computers anyway.
Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist <at> gmail.com> writes:
I don't think reducing <head> clutter is enough of a reason to drop support here. The clutter will go away anyway if/when Vector becomes the default skin -- then IE5 users can still use Monobook. Why not let them?
By the same line of thought, they can use nostalgia or some other old skin. At any rate, few people know there are skins in the first place, and even fewer would be willing to bother with them, so saying that the affected people will switch to other skins and we won't lose that insignificant amount of readership is just self-deception IMO.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 30 January 2010 14:42, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
Whoops, haven't had any caffeine yet this morning, left the two links off here. They're:
[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/61083
Interestingly, the revision summary for that revision gives a link to general browser stats, rather than Wikimedia browser stats, which are obviously the relevant ones (although we have such high reach that there isn't a large difference). We have stats from Nov 2009 (http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportClients.htm) - were those generated by a script that could be run again? Getting some trends could help us work out when to ditch IE6. The recent Google/China/IE story has received lots of coverage, including the authorities in France and Germany advising people to ditch IE entirely, so IE6 usage has probably shown a noticeable dip.
I read a note before that someone caught Microsoft's Bing making a number of requests to their site with a UA that makes it look like ie6 and inflates stats. http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/dear-microsoft
Are the stats setup to differentiate between real ie6 users and bing autosurfing?
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://daniel.friesen.name]
On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 8:36 PM, Daniel Friesen lists@nadir-seen-fire.com wrote:
I read a note before that someone caught Microsoft's Bing making a number of requests to their site with a UA that makes it look like ie6 and inflates stats. http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/dear-microsoft
Someone from Microsoft told this guy that they spoof the UA because some sites won't give content to UAs they don't recognise, including the msnbot:
http://eng.genius.com/blog/2010/01/12/user-agent-strings/
All the examples of spoofed IE 6 strings I could find included Windows NT 5.2 (ie, Windows Server 2003) in the UA; this OS is currently 0.64% of requests:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm
Here's someone talking about a Bing bot transcoding mobile sites that also spoofs IE 6:
http://wapreview.com/blog/?p=4127
Note that along with the UA header is a Via header with "1.1 WTRSCP19911". Presumably that's the shorthand for the transcoder service. I wonder if msnbot also gives a Via header along with the spoofed UA?
Hi guys,
I'm reopening this discussion to bring up an Idea that Thomas had below: could we have an updated stat for browser market share? It would be nice to have for a migration we're considering on ro.wp.
Thanks, Strainu
On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 5:12 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 30 January 2010 14:42, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
Whoops, haven't had any caffeine yet this morning, left the two links off here. They're:
[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/61083
Interestingly, the revision summary for that revision gives a link to general browser stats, rather than Wikimedia browser stats, which are obviously the relevant ones (although we have such high reach that there isn't a large difference). We have stats from Nov 2009 (http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportClients.htm) - were those generated by a script that could be run again? Getting some trends could help us work out when to ditch IE6. The recent Google/China/IE story has received lots of coverage, including the authorities in France and Germany advising people to ditch IE entirely, so IE6 usage has probably shown a noticeable dip.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 20 February 2010 10:48, Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
Hi guys,
I'm reopening this discussion to bring up an Idea that Thomas had below: could we have an updated stat for browser market share? It would be nice to have for a migration we're considering on ro.wp.
Also, purely for the sake of idle curiosity, I'd like to see what impact the Windows Browser Choice thing that is launching in Europe about now has. That means we need stats from before and after.
On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 3:00 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Also, purely for the sake of idle curiosity, I'd like to see what impact the Windows Browser Choice thing that is launching in Europe about now has. That means we need stats from before and after.
That option launches next week in 3 countries and will expand during march. So stats from feb. '10 and mar. '10 should do the trick.
On 30 January 2010 14:37, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
As has been stated in many places by many people: IE6's penetration remains mostly in corporate environments, where users don't have a choice in browsers and the company doesn't want risk breaking working web applications. The fact that Microsoft is supporting it for another 4 years--it should've been shelved already--doesn't improve matters either.
This is oh so tempting:
http://danielrw.tumblr.com/post/266672251/hilarious-ie6-splash-screens
- d.
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 1:59 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://danielrw.tumblr.com/post/266672251/hilarious-ie6-splash-screens
Yeah, but something more subtle might actually be appropriate. Presumably IE6 lingers so long because it doesn't cause *users* any problems. All the headache is on the side of web developers. If you make it a problem for users (eg, youtube doesn't work anymore, iirc), then they eventually make enough noise to bug their corporate masters to switch.
Question is, where to draw the line? A simple "You're using a crappy browser, please upgrade" banner will be efficiently ignored. Refusal to serve the page at all is obnoxious. You need something a little sneaky like "You're using IE6. Retrieving IE6 support from software archive...loading....loading...<5 seconds>...done" Ok, that's obnoxious too, but it's the kind of thing users eventually go "Can I please have another browser, wikipedia is so slow".
Steve
On 2/3/10 1:54 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:
On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 1:59 AM, David Gerarddgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://danielrw.tumblr.com/post/266672251/hilarious-ie6-splash-screens
Yeah, but something more subtle might actually be appropriate. Presumably IE6 lingers so long because it doesn't cause *users* any problems. All the headache is on the side of web developers. If you make it a problem for users (eg, youtube doesn't work anymore, iirc), then they eventually make enough noise to bug their corporate masters to switch.
Question is, where to draw the line? A simple "You're using a crappy browser, please upgrade" banner will be efficiently ignored. Refusal to serve the page at all is obnoxious. You need something a little sneaky like "You're using IE6. Retrieving IE6 support from software archive...loading....loading...<5 seconds>...done" Ok, that's obnoxious too, but it's the kind of thing users eventually go "Can I please have another browser, wikipedia is so slow".
Steve
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
I think this is an interesting idea...
http://blog.pengoworks.com/index.cfm/2008/6/17/An-unobtrusive-way-to-say-IE6...
- Trevor
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 4:54 PM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Yeah, but something more subtle might actually be appropriate. Presumably IE6 lingers so long because it doesn't cause *users* any problems. All the headache is on the side of web developers. If you make it a problem for users (eg, youtube doesn't work anymore, iirc), then they eventually make enough noise to bug their corporate masters to switch.
Our goal is to make information freely available to as many people as possible. Annoying people who try to use Wikipedia would make it less pleasant for them to use the site and run contrary to our mission. We need to support IE6 as well as possible, given realistic constraints on our manpower. We should not be taking out our frustration at IE6 on users who typically didn't choose their browser in the first place.
On 2/3/10 2:01 PM, Aryeh Gregor wrote:
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 4:54 PM, Steve Bennettstevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Yeah, but something more subtle might actually be appropriate. Presumably IE6 lingers so long because it doesn't cause *users* any problems. All the headache is on the side of web developers. If you make it a problem for users (eg, youtube doesn't work anymore, iirc), then they eventually make enough noise to bug their corporate masters to switch.
Our goal is to make information freely available to as many people as possible. Annoying people who try to use Wikipedia would make it less pleasant for them to use the site and run contrary to our mission. We need to support IE6 as well as possible, given realistic constraints on our manpower. We should not be taking out our frustration at IE6 on users who typically didn't choose their browser in the first place.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
I think that's obvious. In all seriousness though, we may want to consider the possibility of letting users know about features they are missing out on. In the case of the UsabilityInitiative work I'm doing, IE6 hasn't really been a problem since we ditched it long ago. Users of IE6 won't even know how wonderful things might be on the other side of the upgrade.
Also, we are open source, and thus we want to promote open source browsers. So, it's not a far-stretch to imagine us actively doing so, even if IE worked great. But once again, yes, we'll catch more bees with honey than... you get the idea.
- Trevor
On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 9:11 AM, Trevor Parscal tparscal@wikimedia.org wrote:
.. I think that's obvious. In all seriousness though, we may want to consider the possibility of letting users know about features they are missing out on. In the case of the UsabilityInitiative work I'm doing, IE6 hasn't really been a problem since we ditched it long ago. Users of IE6 won't even know how wonderful things might be on the other side of the upgrade.
IE 6.0 was the third most popular browser in November 2009, with 12% of the marketshare.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportClients.htm
A fully patched Windows 2000 machine only upgrades as far as 6.x; IE7&8 are not available for W2K. Of course, W2K users can migrate to Firefox, so they do have options, however IE6 is sufficiently functional for wikitext editing and reading.
Is the UsabilityInitiative ignoring IE 6.0?
-- John Vandenberg
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 5:11 PM, Trevor Parscal tparscal@wikimedia.org wrote:
I think that's obvious. In all seriousness though, we may want to consider the possibility of letting users know about features they are missing out on.
If someone has a good idea of how to do this without being annoying, that would be reasonable.
On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 4:36 AM, Daniel Friesen lists@nadir-seen-fire.com wrote:
I read a note before that someone caught Microsoft's Bing making a number of requests to their site with a UA that makes it look like ie6 and inflates stats. http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/dear-microsoft
Are the stats setup to differentiate between real ie6 users and bing autosurfing?
I'd be pretty surprised if Bing is generating enough traffic to noticeably affect the percentage, even if it does get counted as IE6.
On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 6:17 AM, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
Someone from Microsoft told this guy that they spoof the UA because some sites won't give content to UAs they don't recognise, including the msnbot:
Funny how every other search engine manages to use a real UA string . . .
On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 14:37, Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 5:11 PM, Trevor Parscal tparscal@wikimedia.org wrote:
Are the stats setup to differentiate between real ie6 users and bing autosurfing?
I'd be pretty surprised if Bing is generating enough traffic to noticeably affect the percentage, even if it does get counted as IE6.
Bing can hit you pretty hard: http://blogs.perl.org/users/cpan_testers/2010/01/msnbot-must-die.html
On 20 February 2010 23:00, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason avarab@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 14:37, Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 5:11 PM, Trevor Parscal tparscal@wikimedia.org wrote:
Are the stats setup to differentiate between real ie6 users and bing autosurfing?
I'd be pretty surprised if Bing is generating enough traffic to noticeably affect the percentage, even if it does get counted as IE6.
Bing can hit you pretty hard: http://blogs.perl.org/users/cpan_testers/2010/01/msnbot-must-die.html
Well.. is not a crawler, ... it seems a cracracracracracracracracrawler, for the way repeat the same request N times. It act not like a single crawler, but like a multiple list of crawler with not intercomunication all from the same range of ip's. A single optimization would be for all these crawlers to share the robots.txt file (is not this obvious?). Since that request is not shared, you see all instances making separate requests. Theres also not sincronization, so all the crawlers can hit you site at the same time, say... 15 asking robot.txt at once .. or spread 2 hours, is just luck.
It seems a .. simplistic and brute approach to internet indexing.. :-/ It seems Microsoft is dropping money on the problem, but not brains.
On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 5:00 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason avarab@gmail.com wrote:
Bing can hit you pretty hard: http://blogs.perl.org/users/cpan_testers/2010/01/msnbot-must-die.html
The toolserver was hit by that too:
http://journal.toolserver.org/entry/2009/06/09/wherein-msnbot-behaves-badly-...
But I doubt it's an appreciable fraction of the total IE market share. The problem is that the bots sometimes come too fast, not that they're a large fraction of visitors when averaged over time.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org