How much time do you spend coding for IE

[eluser]simshaun[/eluser]
IE collapses margins.. google it and you'll find plenty of articles explaining it in detail.

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
[quote author="jedd" date="1239738062"]I develop everything using KDE's Konqueror browser. (If it's good enough for Apple to pilfer and claim as their own ...)

If I hit a weird bug that I'm not sure if it's a CSS / presentation issue, or just some bad coding on my behalf, I might crank up Iceweasel (Firefox ™) and then blink a few times at the way even it manages to make things look worse.

Once I'm nearing completion (this rarely happens) I might ask someone to look at it with IE, though I don't have many friends that use IE so this is getting harder to do.

If they say it looks okay, I reason I must have written either very basic code or done something hugely wrong.

If they say it looks bad, I'll modify my footer message based on that assessment (varying from 'Get a real browser, you Microsoft weenie' to 'Best experienced by someone with a clue' - depending how cheery I'm feeling at the time).

Hope this helps.[/quote]

Have you tried installing IE via Wine? There is a package called [url="http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Installation"]IEs4Linux[/url], and it's quite good. However, I think that IE support at the moment is a little flaky, and IE9 support just doesn't exist, yet(!)

[eluser]slowgary[/eluser]
I agree with NogDog here, as long as you're not in quirks mode, IE7 plays okay most of the time. IE6 has it's issues, but once you know what they are you just learn to deal. I've established a personal policy that if I want to do something that doesn't work in IE6, I remove it from IE6, instead of trying to figure out a work around (non-vital desgn elements, I mean).

TheFuzzyOne, as far as the box model is concerned, IE7 seems to follow the rules. I worked at a company whose CMS was inserting a comment at line 1 during development phase of a site, and all of the designers complained about how broken IE7 was until I started and realized that the comment was causing IE7 to work in quirks mode. Everyone had to relearn the proper way to slice.

The issues I see the most are as follows:
IE6
position: fixed;
display: table;
png alpha transparency
png gamma / png<->css color mismatch
:hover pseudoclass on anything other than anchors
double margin/padding bug

IE7
display: table;
png gamma / png<->css color mismatch
double margin/padding bug


These issues all have workarounds, and I usually end up using the asterisk and underscore in my CSS to satisfy the dysfunctional IE family, as well as:
&bull; JavaScript for IE6 :hover
&bull; filter: progidXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(...) for IE6 png alpha transparency
&bull; tweakpng.exe to strip gamma info out of png images
&bull; using <table> tags where display: table is needed in either IE.

I haven't played with IE8 much, but with it's release I'm going to make a real effort to stop supporting IE6. I'll basically 'fork' my designs and leave some of the elements out of IE6. I was actually thinking of adding a JavaScript notice at the top of pages for IE6 users, urging them to upgrade - something like the yellow bar IE7 uses to notify you of scripts and such. It's really up to us as professionals to help move the web forward and IE6 is the largest stone in our path.

Many people have mentioned that 25% of internet users are still on IE6, but this is a skewed fact that you shouldn't even care about. First, even the best statistics can't account for everyone. Secondly, who cares what browser 25% of internet users are on? You should worry more about what YOUR site's visitors use, and tailor to those browsers. Use stats on your site. If none of your visitors are using IE6, why spend time breaking your CSS and markup for 25% of internet users that have never been to your site? I read an article by John Resig talking about the cost vs. benefit of supporting the various browsers and it made a lot of sense to me. Read it here: http://ejohn.org/blog/the-browsers-of-2009/

I propose that everyone on these forums make a pact to drop support for IE6 whenever possible. IE6 was released in 2001, that's EIGHT YEARS AGO!!! In internet years, it's over 100 YEARS OLD!!!!! Seriously, most of our client's would probably not even drive a car that's 8 years old, why are they still using IE6? Even the most illiterate PC user can click on the yellow Window's Update icon in the tray and hit 'OK' to IE7. At this point, they're 2 versions behind. How many people here are using FireFox 1.0? (FireBird?)

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
[quote author="Johan André" date="1239738255"]I use the 960-framework for layout.
I handles alot of the stuff that otherwise gets me into trouble with IE (floats mostly).[/quote]

It's just a shame that we have to add extra mark-up to code that's already valid, just because Microsoft couldn't be bothered to get with the program.

I've never used a CSS framework before, because I just don't "get" them. Perhaps I should look into it. Most problems I get in IE are easily(ish) solvable, but it's becoming tiresome having to debug code in several different versions of IE.

Just out of Interest, who actually "likes" IE? I know there are a lot of users out there who don't even know what a Web browser is, let alone how to install one, so they use the one with which they are provided, but I can honestly say Firefox is the one for me (although Google's Chrome browser is looking quite good, although it's a bit buggy).

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
[quote author="simshaun" date="1239743313"]IE collapses margins.. google it and you'll find plenty of articles explaining it in detail.[/quote]

Thanks. I will do. It just pees me off that Microsoft feel the way I want my page to display isn't good enough, and that it must display it the way Microsoft thinks it should look...

[eluser]simshaun[/eluser]
Try explaining to a client why their customers are bitching at them saying their site "doesnt work"... the people that still use IE6 either have a reason for doing so or simply don't know how to/or that they should upgrade. Of course you are supposed to tailor to people that visit your sites, but having general statistics is important for knowing the chance that somebody runs across your site is using an "unsupported" browser.

As to the cost of supporting a browser such as IE6, its insignificant. What is so difficult/costly about a conditional comment to apply styles that ONLY apply to IE6? Maybe its costly if you are in John Resig's world, where mostly all you deal with in your job is the idiocies of a browser's support for JavaScript.

Offtopic: slowgary, the car comment was irrelevant and baseless. Lots of people drive cars way older than 2001, and I happen to know several clients who drive older cars. Its not like they cant afford a new one. People have preferences.

[eluser]slowgary[/eluser]
I don't think Microsoft has a "We know better than the W3C" standpoint, I just think it's very hard to write a good browser engine and Microsoft is more of a marketing company these days than a good software development company. They could do us all a lot of good and just use webkit. The average user would have no idea, and the web professional would be ecstatic - it's a win-win solution. I think the same thing goes for Windows. Microsoft should do what Apple did and offer their own version of Linux, with a Microsoft sponsored emulator. WINE has come a long way by reverse engineering, imagine if Microsoft helped the project out.

[eluser]NogDog[/eluser]
[quote author="TheFuzzy0ne" date="1239743241"][quote author="NogDog" date="1239742957"]Which is why you want to get it out of "quirks mode" as I described in my earlier reply. When not in quirks mode it interprets element width/height/margin/padding as per the W3C specification instead of as per Microsoft's default, IE-only specification.[/quote]

I'm not sure I agree. As far as I'm aware, my page doesn't display in quirks mode, yet margin-top and margin-bottom are not rendered at all in IE. What am I missing?[/quote]
If you install the Firefox "Web Developer" extension, whenever you load a page you'll get an indicator as to whether it's in quirks mode (red X) or not (green check).

However, it is true that different browsers have different default values for many margin/padding settings (nor are default values specified in the W3C standards), so you may need to explicitly set them (or globally zero them out via the "*" selector and then explicitly set them by element/class/id.

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
Or better yet, they can just use Rino or some other open source engine. If you mention open source to Microsoft I think they'd have to go look it up in a dictionary... I think it all comes down to money. People would probably start asking questions is MS published software based on an existing open source project.

As for WINE, I'm not actually sure if it's even legal. I think Microsoft relaxed their rules a little fairly recently to allow users to run Windows in virtual machines (I can't remember where I read that), but I don't think the license allows you to use any Windows DLLs in WINE, and also I think that you have to purchase a copy specifically to virtualise, you can't use the same CD key you used for your Desktop installation.

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
[quote author="simshaun" date="1239744268"]Try explaining to a client why their customers are bitching at them saying their site "doesnt work"... the people that still use IE6 either have a reason for doing so or simply don't know how to/or that they should upgrade. Of course you are supposed to tailor to people that visit your sites, but having general statistics is important for knowing the chance that somebody runs across your site is using an "unsupported" browser.

As to the cost of supporting a browser such as IE6, its insignificant. What is so difficult/costly about a conditional comment to apply styles that ONLY apply to IE6? Maybe its costly if you are in John Resig's world, where mostly all you deal with in your job is the idiocies of a browser's support for JavaScript.

Offtopic: slowgary, the car comment was irrelevant and baseless. Lots of people drive cars way older than 2001, and I happen to know several clients who drive older cars. Its not like they cant afford a new one. People have preferences.[/quote]

I agree with some of what you're saying, but not all of it. You simply cannot support every browser in existence, it's just not possible, which is why you go for the ones your customers use most, or the ones that the majority use. You can please the majority, but you'll always be slamming the door in someone's face, no matter what you do.

I've not met a single person to date who has deliberately stuck with IE6. The only person I know who still uses it, is running an illegal copy of Windows, and is afraid to upgrade due to WGA.