Ruby Forum Radiant CMS > Radiant Browser Support -- Drop IE6?

Posted by Chris Parrish (cparrish)
on 19.07.2008 20:40
(Received via mailing list)
I have a question for all the Radiant users out there...

Would anyone be left out if Radiant failed to support IE 6?

I am working on some UI/CSS improvements for Radiant which require hacks
and workarounds to support this browser.  It can be done but I'm not
sure it's worth it.

IE 8 is already in beta and IE 7 is freely available for all but Windows
2000 -- and that OS is 8 years old (benefits of a public education right
there, baby).  And Win2k can easily install Firefox, Opera, or Safari so
it's not like they're stuck.

Thoughts?


-Chris

P.S. Please don't waste bandwidth with Microsoft or IE bashing (I'm not
interested in why everyone should use <insert your favorite browser
here>). I just want to know whether it would be a problem for Radiant
admin users to need IE 7+.
Posted by Alex Wayne (Guest)
on 19.07.2008 20:48
(Received via mailing list)
I would dance a god damn jig.

Seriously though, I think public sites still need to support IE6.  But
gated admin areas that have a small number of users, I think its fine
to declare IE7 the minimum.  And, if we're lucky, the rest of the
internet will follow suit.

-Alex
http://beautifulpixel.com
Posted by Sean Cribbs (seancribbs)
on 19.07.2008 21:49
(Received via mailing list)
I'm of the opinion that IE6 is going the way of the dinosaur.  Unless
your client absolutely needs it, I would avoid bending over backwards
for it.  IE6 support on the front-end is a different story (alas you may
need at least minimal support for it -- still has approximate 25% market
share), but I think it's reasonable to require modern browsers for the
admin UI.

Sean
Posted by Adam van den Hoven (Guest)
on 20.07.2008 00:07
(Received via mailing list)
I say release without IE6 support and then create a "Legacy Admin UI"
extension to add support for IE < 7, WebTV and other fringe user agents.

Adam
Posted by Chris Parrish (cparrish)
on 20.07.2008 02:00
(Received via mailing list)
Ha! Radiant for Web-TV...

-Chris
Posted by Marty Haught (Guest)
on 20.07.2008 04:36
(Received via mailing list)
I vote we drop IE6 for the admin side.

Cheers,
Marty

On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 5:59 PM, Chris Parrish
Posted by pixelnate@gmail.com (Guest)
on 20.07.2008 11:57
(Received via mailing list)
On Sat, 2008-07-19 at 20:35 -0600, Marty Haught wrote:
> I vote we drop IE6 for the admin side.

I agree with the hatred for IE, but I for one promise my clients to
support the current version of a browser and one version previous.
Currently, that means IE 6 and 7. In many corporate environments IE 6 is
still the only browser allowed in the office. I know it's asinine, but
it's true.

While I certainly don't want to try and mandate which versions of
browsers that an open source project supports, I would like to suggest
that IE 6 not be dropped until version 8 is official. If you do kill
support for IE 6 could you please make an entry in the wiki describing
some of problems you were having with IE and mention where/how it might
be a problem even if you don't make the fix. That way those of use that
still need to support v6 can do so without any further involvement from
the core group.

Of course that's just my $0.02.


~Nate
Posted by Roderick van Domburg (roderickvd)
on 21.07.2008 10:18
Chris Parrish wrote:
> Would anyone be left out if Radiant failed to support IE 6?

I vote against dropping IE6 support.

My rationale is a sad one: many enterprise clients in the Netherlands 
(think governments, education institutes, healthcare, and the like) 
typically have a locked-down and out-of-date workstation. Though they 
aren't likely to run Radiant for their main web presence, many smaller 
internal groups can benefit from Radiant.

Only recently did one of my government clients upgrade from Windows 2000 
and IE6 to Windows Vista and IE7. Many more will follow suit, but for 
now I would suggest keeping IE6 support around for one more major 
release.

Keeping it around for one more major release also provides room for 
giving a deprecation announcement so developers can phase it out. And 
who knows, somebody might actually pick up maintainership if he feels a 
pressing need...

--
Roderick van Domburg
http://www.nedforce.nl
Posted by Josh Schairbaum (Guest)
on 21.07.2008 13:11
(Received via mailing list)
Before there is more discussion on this, would it be possible for us
to get a list of problems that have arisen due to support for IE6?  I
don't really have a frame of reference for how much work it is to
maintain support. I personally think the best course of action would
be to extract any IE6-specific support in an extension that way those
that need it can have it with future versions of Radiant and help
maintain it themselves.

Regards,
Josh
Posted by John W. Long (Guest)
on 21.07.2008 14:02
(Received via mailing list)
For now I think it is appropriate to drop support for IE6. We can
certainly accept a patch back to add it in latter, but I think it is
more important to get the new interface implemented than to quibble
over the details.

Thanks for being willing to work on this Chris.

--
John Long
http://wiseheartdesign.com
Posted by Jim Gay (Guest)
on 21.07.2008 14:43
(Received via mailing list)
On Jul 21, 2008, at 8:01 AM, John W. Long wrote:

> For now I think it is appropriate to drop support for IE6. We can  
> certainly accept a patch back to add it in latter, but I think it is  
> more important to get the new interface implemented than to quibble  
> over the details.
>
> Thanks for being willing to work on this Chris.

I agree. But an IE 6 extension sounds like a good idea.

Chris, I'm trying to clear up my schedule to get more involved in the
new UI. Have you forked radiant-prototype or do you gave a public
location for ideas that you're working on?
Posted by Chris Parrish (cparrish)
on 21.07.2008 16:39
(Received via mailing list)
Hello all.  Thanks for the input.  As John mentioned, I am beginning
work on the new Radiant UI, and my main goals are:

   1. It needs to function correctly
   2. I want the CSS/Markup to be as simple (understandable) as possible
      as this is open source
   3. I want to produce something that won't inadvertently break
      (maintainer removes one line to change something only to learn
      that that line was necessary as a browser hack)

Browser limitations/variations work against all of these (I'm currently
fighting with Firefox).  I'm trying to find a happy (read:
"sane")-medium and I wanted people's take on things.

The consensus seems to be:

    * Most could live without IE6 (no current users requiring it)
    * Many/some could foresee a case where IE6 might be needed

So, I agree with John & Jim that we should shoot for IE 7+ support with
the ability to add in IE 6 as an extension.  Besides, I'm working on
some of the harder parts now and it's looking like PNG support may be
the only limitation (I had other ones in mind when I asked this question
but I think those may be working themselves out).


Jim Gay wrote:
> Chris, I'm trying to clear up my schedule to get more involved in the 
> new UI. Have you forked radiant-prototype or do you gave a public 
> location for ideas that you're working on?
>

It didn't make sense to fork John's Radiant Prototype as that is really
a complete prototype of the existing UI.  I have made a copy of it and
will be hosting it on GitHub here shortly (I'm trying to get the
_layout.haml file working so that the nav will be nailed down before
releasing).

Time permitting, I'll have it up by Wednesday.

-Chris
Posted by Jim Gay (Guest)
on 21.07.2008 17:32
(Received via mailing list)
On Jul 21, 2008, at 10:38 AM, Chris Parrish wrote:
>
> Time permitting, I'll have it up by Wednesday.

Great! Send a message when you do, I'm eager to help.
Posted by David Piehler (davidpiehler)
on 21.07.2008 18:04
Chris Parrish wrote:
> Would anyone be left out if Radiant failed to support IE 6?

I vote to drop IE6 to coincide with the new Radiant UI release and move 
IE6 support to an extension.

- Dave

Posted by Tim Gossett (Guest)
on 21.07.2008 21:42
(Received via mailing list)
On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 12:04 PM, David Piehler <dave@basicsgroup.com>
wrote:

> Chris Parrish wrote:
> > Would anyone be left out if Radiant failed to support IE 6?
>
> I vote to drop IE6 to coincide with the new Radiant UI release and move
> IE6 support to an extension.
>

I vote the same.

And where can I register my extreme disgust for IE's (lack of) CSS 
support,
anyway?

--
Tim Gossett
Posted by Sean Cribbs (seancribbs)
on 21.07.2008 21:49
(Received via mailing list)
Please complain to Microsoft -- they're the only ones who can do
something about it.

Sean
Posted by Adam van den Hoven (Guest)
on 21.07.2008 21:50
(Received via mailing list)
On 21-Jul-08, at 12:42 PM, Tim Gossett wrote:

>
> I vote the same.
>
> And where can I register my extreme disgust for IE's (lack of) CSS  
> support,
> anyway?

You could try the IE blog but /dev/null will be more effective.

Actually I suspect that when IE8 comes out the won't be nearly as
craptacular as its ancestors and almost reach respectability. Passing
ACID 2 goes a long way in my books (by comparison to IE6).
Posted by Nate Turnage (Guest)
on 21.07.2008 22:27
(Received via mailing list)
On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 9:38 AM, Chris Parrish <
chris.parrish-forummail@swankinnovations.com> wrote:

> So, I agree with John & Jim that we should shoot for IE 7+ support with the
> ability to add in IE 6 as an extension.  Besides, I'm working on some of the
> harder parts now and it's looking like PNG support may be the only
> limitation (I had other ones in mind when I asked this


I always use pngfix.js to get IE6 to work with transparent png files and 
it
works like a charm.

Find it here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/index.htm



~Nate
Posted by Nate Turnage (Guest)
on 21.07.2008 22:32
(Received via mailing list)
On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Tim Gossett <tim@mrgossett.com> wrote:

> And where can I register my extreme disgust for IE's (lack of) CSS support,
> anyway?


If you are talking about IE6 then you have no place. And as for IE7 you 
need
to know that the current Internet Explorer team is completely new as
Microsoft disbanded the IE team when it looked like they won "The Great
Browser War." There are no IE6 team members on the current IE team, so
things will only get better from here. I think once IE 8 is released 
into
the wild we (designers/developers) can finally start abandoning IE 6 in
earnest. Be thankful we don't need to support 5.5 any more.  ;^)



~Nate
Posted by Chris Parrish (cparrish)
on 21.07.2008 22:36
(Received via mailing list)
I can get PNGs to work just fine with IE 6 via pngfix.js or just using
IE's proprietary filters in the CSS.  But you can't do any fancy
positioning -- just left/top aligned images for backgrounds.

There are other ways to skin that cat, so there should be a solution
there somewhere.  I just don't want to have to support or maintain it.

There will be other issues that crop up before we're done, I'm sure.

-Chris
Posted by Adam van den Hoven (Guest)
on 21.07.2008 22:55
(Received via mailing list)
You might want to try this:

http://ajaxian.com/archives/iepngfix-2-now-supports-css-background-position-and-repeat

I haven't tried it but it looks promising.

Adam
Posted by Dan Simpson (danorine)
on 21.07.2008 23:40
(Received via mailing list)
Oh dear.  Is cat skinning a requested feature of Radiant?  Surely that 
can
be moved to an extension, along with pelting, flaying, and tanning.

You know, for the sake of the children and vegetarians.


On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 4:35 PM, Chris Parrish <
Posted by Arik Jones (imakethings)
on 23.07.2008 21:00
Adam van den Hoven wrote:
> You might want to try this:
> 
> http://ajaxian.com/archives/iepngfix-2-now-supports-css-background-position-and-repeat
> 
> I haven't tried it but it looks promising.
> 
> Adam

Tried it! Works great. But be careful when using links and nested 
elements that use background-position and.