Recent news for you folks who often ignore certain key browsers while designing your sites in Freeway:
Sadly, until XP is once and for all put to death, IE8 will continue to be a design bother.
(Here in Japan, about 65% of our business website visitors are IE users, and 40% of those still use IE8.)
—James Wages
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Just spotted the following article today:
Nearly 40% of Windows installations worldwide are XP! The whacky part is, despite the availability of better browsers like Chrome and FireFox for XP, most XP users still use some flavor of IE. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at such stupidity in light of the fact that these folks are using Windows in the first place. Even so, these folks are still a burden for those of us in the world of web design.
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Two things to note James:
We don’t ignore them, we simply don’t invest much time in “designing skills” such as shadows and stuff. This has nothing to do with functions, that should at least work naturally.
The point is, that 80% of the 40% are Chinese pirated XP versions.
Even Germany, which is behind the Moon of Technology has a IE rate lower 20% (Yippiehhhhh). Even Chrome is a bit higher - that’s indeed interesting.
Cheers
Thomas
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I don’t think that designing (or optimizing) a website for a specific browser is a good choice. Neither for the developer, nor for the customer (or website visitor).
There is the W3C who developed the HTML standard (and various others, by the way). And I consider a website being perfect, when it passes their HTML validator. http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.starenterprise.com&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0
Anyway, I also must confess that I don’t had much browser incompatibility issues in the past in my projects. 
Tobias.
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It’s not about “optimizing a website for a given browser.” I brought this topic up only to proclaim that we should “not ignore certain browsers as we design websites.”
There’s a huge difference between “optimizing a website for a given browser” and “trying to ensure that our website doesn’t completely fall apart in certain browsers.”
If I can spend a few moments of my time to ensure that IE8 users (which comprise 40% of all IE-using visitors to my sites here in Japan) can see the basic content of my site, then why the heck would I avoid doing that? In many cases, I see web designers refuse to spend those extra “a few moments” mostly because they have an emotional knee-jerk reaction or hatred to those older browsers. I too hate those older browsers, but the numbers compel me to make time to ensure my sites don’t completely fall apart in those browsers.
In the July 2013 issue of MacWorld US, I read an article that says “Microsoft is no longer the enemy.” While reading it I thought to myself, “this article has been written by a very ignorant man.” Microsoft still is the enemy insofar as their living legacy of “Microsoft Windows XP” still lives on. Until windows XP dies it’s final death, there will be those stubborn and stupid holdouts who continue to use IE 8, and sometimes even IE 7 or IE 6. The very fact that these people are so stubborn to continue using windows XP is one of the big reasons they are too stupid and stubborn to upgrade their browsers in to Chrome or Firefox.
But in some cases, these XP people are business users who continue using older versions of IE because there are certain banks or other sites that will only work well with those old browsers. And for those people I have added some browser sniffing code on certain pages of my site that devices those people strongly that they should install Chrome Frame. And that, my friends, is my point. I took a few moments of my time to add the necessary code to alert those stubborn people to the existence and importance of Chrome Frame. I did not merely design a website and ignore those people while deriding them as “stupid idiots.” And yes, I do honestly think that some of these stubborn people may be more inclined to install Chrome Frame than to switch to a completely different browser like Chrome or Firefox. The reason is only logical. Chrome Frame allows you to continue using your pathetically old I.E. as you always have, but then it displays modern pages properly, assuming those webpages are tagged for compatibility with Chrome Frame (which my sites presently are).
Suffice it to say, I use Google Analytics to determine who visits my websites most, and I do, however grudgingly, spend those extra few moments to try to ensure that my sites display “halfway decently” in those browsers used by the majority of my website visitors. I consider that “intelligent and thoughtful” web design.
—James Wages
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I don’t consider people being stupid just when using an outdated webbrowser or operating system. Some of them are not aware of this fact, some of them have other reasons (and yes, few are ignorant).
Advising visitors to upgrade to a newer webbrowser is not really the way I would go. That’s some kind of paternalism. Instead of, I would provide a text-only or “multimedia feature reduced” version of my site.
Tobias.
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I take no pains to be politically correct. I just tell it like it is. Who among us has not whispered in our heart “those stupid IExx users!” when designed a given web page in the past? (The honest among us will raise their hand at this point.) But as I already said, the emphasis is not on stupidity or ignorance but in how we are going to deal with our sites IN LIGHT OF THE NUMBERS. Google Analytics has an impact on me, let me tell you. And it should. It’s only logical.
“Advising visitors to upgrade to a newer webbrowser” is not what I said, if you re-read what I wrote in my last post. Adding Chrome Frame is not a “new browser.” In fact, Chrome Frame never comes into play at all unless the site you visit has specifically defined “meta http-equiv” data included in the HTML. Furthermore, users can install Chrome Frame even if they lack Admin privileges. It’s really quite amazing. It installs quite fast and very easily, and uninstalling it is a snap too (Add/Remove Programs).
Nevertheless, I still do a tad bit of testing in IE8 to ensure that my site doesn’t completely fall apart in it. And I do that despite the fact I have browser sniffing code that informs IE8 users to either upgrade to a newer browser (Chrome or Firefox) OR install Chrome Frame.
More on Chrome Frame here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_Frame
All you as a web designer need to do is just add this to your web pages:
meta http-equiv=“X-UA-Compatible”
content=“IE=edge,chrome=1”
Then if an IE6 user with Chrome Frame comes along, they will view your web page within IE6 in the same exact manner as if they were viewing your page in Chrome! It tried it in IE7. It’s really amazing.
–James Wages
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And for those concerned about validation (it throws an error with the HTML5 doctype) you can alternatively specify the meta tag in an .htaccess file and avoid the HTML validation stuff. Either way will work.
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
BrowserMatch MSIE ie
Header set X-UA-Compatible "IE=Edge,chrome=1" env=ie
IfModule>
IfModule>
Todd
http://xiiro.com
meta http-equiv=“X-UA-Compatible” content=“IE=edge,chrome=1”
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This might be a more appropriate solution than my earlier post:
Header set X-UA-Compatible "IE=edge"
Todd
http://xiiro.com
On Jun 5, 2013, at 8:52 PM, Todd email@hidden wrote:
And for those concerned about validation (it throws an error with the HTML5 doctype) you can alternatively specify the meta tag in an .htaccess file and avoid the HTML validation stuff. Either way will work.
<IfModule mod_headers.c> BrowserMatch MSIE ie Header set X-UA-Compatible "IE=Edge,chrome=1" env=ie IfModule> IfModule>Todd
http://xiiro.commeta http-equiv=“X-UA-Compatible” content=“IE=edge,chrome=1”
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