Re: [css-d] Pragmatic look at our CSS future - ripped from: The CSSOverlords
--- On Fri, 1/23/09, Joseph Sims wrote: > Imagine if other mediums had to deal with the same reasoning > that the media they produce has to look the same when viewed > with inferior technology. > > I'm young ... You may be young but, IMHO, you speak a lot of sense! :) It's nice to get a slice of optimism to counter the gritty cynicism we've become accustomed to. I've developed for clients before that have no idea what their sites look like in IE6. Despite the fact that they want pixel-precision, and talk about this mythical thing called 'the fold', they would not care about how their site looked in anything other than their browser of choice (IE, unfortunately - but IE7, at least). I'd like to hear from one of these IT people who have held back our entire industry, and wasted everyone's money for so much time now. Exactly how long are you going to leave it before migrating this c...@ppy IE6-only application you've forced on everyone? Another month? A year? A decade? Are you ever going to let the rest of us move on? __ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
Re: [css-d] Pragmatic look at our CSS future - ripped from: The CSSOverlords
Gunlaug Sørtun wrote: So my advice is to launch your sites/designs when they appear as intended in the good browsers, and just make sure they are not completely inaccessible or unusable or appear too broken in IE7/6. Adjust things later - when you get around to it, and don't mention it anywhere. " That's my stand on "reasonable degree of visual perfection" in IE. regards Georg Sounds reasonable. Those with less CSS experience may have a little difficulty being quite so cavalier, though :-) : "Not completely inaccessible or unusable or appear too broken in IE7/6" can, in and of itself, be a daunting experience. But such is life... The good news is that as the need to support IE/6 in any but a cursory manner dwindles with time, cross-browser support for the CSS3 modules will improve and open new and more exciting challenges. At the moment, at least from my experience thus far, the support for these modules among compliant browsers is as about as abysmal as supporting IE/6. But this will change, too-- for the better... ~d -- A thin red line and a salmon-color ampersand forthcoming. http://chelseacreekstudio.com/ __ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
Re: [css-d] Pragmatic look at our CSS future - ripped from: The CSSOverlords
Imagine if other mediums had to deal with the same reasoning that the media they produce has to look the same when viewed with inferior technology. We never would have made it out of black and white television. At some point, old things have to be left behind, and new things need to be embraced. People that have inferior products to view media with, know that their products are inferior, and should realistically expect the content they view to be different than someone who is current. Someone using a VCR doesn't get picture quality equal to that of a DVD player, and they know that, or, they don't know what a DVD is, and they don't know that there is anything better. If using features in new browsers is to be made difficult by looking back at browsers from two generations ago... then what is the point of making new browsers? I'm young, and maybe I don't quite follow the reasoning behind this. People using IE6 can use my sites, but they don't look the same. And if you use IE6 for whatever good reason, and still expect new web experiences to look the same to you as someone using Firefox 3, then I can't relate. I think you are lucky... at least you can get to the content. Try putting a Blu-Ray disc in a DVD player. __ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
Re: [css-d] Pragmatic look at our CSS future - ripped from: The CSSOverlords
Having development locked/frozen at IE6 level because "it has to look the same", definitely is a barrier that should be removed now that we write 2009. What kind of arguments do you think might have a chance to work? My stand has for a long time been that only visual designers (and other crazy animals) compare design-details across browser-land. The web isn't rigid, and no wish for "print on web" can make it so. It is therefore a complete waste of resources to aim for that "pixel-perfect look across the board". Resources are better spent on improving overall quality, getting the content and intended functionality through to as many end-users as possible, and making sure one stays ahead of the crowd. Some have serious problems swallowing my argument, but as the current financial situation takes hold it seems to sink down a little easier. A clip from my response to someone who asked for advice on the same issue a week ago: " I do not see the point in trying to make inferior browsers like IE7/6 and older render everything the same as the good browsers. If something looks "good enough" in an old browser, then it _is_ "good enough". Visitors who can compare between browsers do not need any help from me, since they already know how to switch between browsers. So my advice is to launch your sites/designs when they appear as intended in the good browsers, and just make sure they are not completely inaccessible or unusable or appear too broken in IE7/6. Adjust things later - when you get around to it, and don't mention it anywhere. " That's my stand on "reasonable degree of visual perfection" in IE. regards Georg -- http://www.gunlaug.no __ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
Re: [css-d] Pragmatic look at our CSS future - ripped from: The CSSOverlords
Michael Stevens wrote: -Original Message- From: Nancy Johnson [mailto:njohnso...@gmail.com] The problem with getting rid of IE6 is too many internal applications especially in the business community will only work in IE6, like the internal application we use. There is no budget to make the updates and I'm sure they are massive. Nancy -- So, who's the rocket scientist that decided it would be a good idea to write applications with ONE and ONLY ONE viable program to run those programs? Writing a stand-alone program is one thing... writing a web application for use in a browser and targeting the worst browser possible isn't exactly a smart move. But then again I guess we ARE talking about "big business" aren't we? No brain trusts there... We're talking about corporations who bought the MS "vision" that IE was the only browser that mattered (and there was a time not too long ago when that was very true, especially in the business world). And don't necessarily have the financial and personnel resources to make complex changes to large software systems. Besides, it's as rude to turn a way customers who use IE6 as it would be to turn someone away from the door of a brick-and-mortar store because they wore a blue shirt instead of a green one. ;-) -- David gn...@hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community __ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
Re: [css-d] Pragmatic look at our CSS future - ripped from: The CSSOverlords
The old paradigm: we can make a page look equal. This is correct for the most part. But should we still do this? When talking with co-workers, they tell me that a page has to look the same (they usually omit qualifiers like "to the degree possible"). With respect to maintenance costs, performance costs, and with regard to the overall browser and specification development process, I think it matters more if we start discussing the "reasonable degree". There are good reasons for "functional hacking", that is, to keep a page usable for IE6 users. More and more, I tend to think there are lesser reasons for "presentational hacking", cosmetic things like a transparency here, an equal height column just to show a gradient there, how great we are. Currently, with the old paradigm, I have to fix an irrelevant 3px bug but I am not allowed to make full use of CSS 2.1 or to try some CSS3 modules? Ingo __ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
Re: [css-d] Pragmatic look at our CSS future - ripped from: The CSSOverlords
Ingo Chao wrote: The first one to be convinced is not the client. I believe we have to convince our co-workers, since the old paradigm was promoted by us. Which of the old paradigms are you (mainly) referring to? After all: various models have been and still are promoted all over the place. These (mind-)models are intertwined and there are almost as many variants as there are web developers out here - and plenty confusion around the issue. I think we have to somehow define what we're trying to leave behind us, a little better, as otherwise we may not be able to smooth the transitions in ways that our co-workers and others find acceptable/workable. We haven't gotten rid of layout tables yet, and in themselves they rarely ever were much of a problem anyway. The worst thing that can happen is that we take excellent ideas too far too fast and create gaps. There are so many gaps in web development already, and not only "old school" web developers and those entirely new to web design find it difficult and/or completely unnecessary to jump those gaps. - Existing sites based on one or more of the existing models, will continue to work more or less as they always have, and most will be satisfied with slight upgrades on issues where the old models fail in new browsers. New sites can only go so far in breaking with the old models and introducing new ones, as there is too much competition and too little knowledge to convince "the masses" in all camps that progress is both inevitable and important. - That it "doesn't have to look the same in every browser", depends on who one asks. To most of our co-workers the visual aspect is as important as the usability one - to web designers for instance. Most will continue to say that it should "look the same to the degree possible", but will only go so far in checking if it actually does "look the same". We can probably slip "slight failures" under the radar most of the time. The visual is not much of a problem for the average visitors with an inferior browser - as long as the site works, since they rarely ever have any idea what it's supposed to look like anyway and probably couldn't care less after having surfed around a bit. - Users that use shells on top of Trident, Gecko or WebKit engines may have no idea which browser they actually use and whether or not it is inferior. For instance: I have read relatively new comments on blogs promoting Maxton as replacement for IE6 on older win2K OS - as alternative to the latest Firefox and Opera, seemingly completely unaware of the fact that Maxton uses the existing IE6 engine with all its flaws and weaknesses. Such shells may also not be given engine-upgrades very often - even if they can (integrate them), which means old engine-versions may linger for years. - I'm not sure if there are any parts of CSS3 that are so revolutionary that we can not introduce them as part of a slow and steady evolution - without introducing new methods. IE6 has never been much of a problem for me, probably because I have treated it as an old an obsolete "quirks mode" browser for years - since long before it was superseded by IE7. I do use things like IE-expressions for basic layout effects when I see no better options, and provide fallback for those too in case support fails. I know IE-expressions slows IE down - I have tested it extensively, but minimal use seems to have more positive than negative effects for the average visitor on the average web site. Promote them - no, present them as an option - yes, use them - at times. regards Georg -- http://www.gunlaug.no __ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
Re: [css-d] Pragmatic look at our CSS future - ripped from: The CSSOverlords
Even if we can make a site look nearly the same in every browser, we should not attempt this anymore. Big sites are getting bigger, and the performance is affected a lot if we use expressions/scripts and filters for IE. If the site absolutely must "look" the same, the site is inevitably getting slower and won't "feel" the same in the end. Users who still have to use IE6 for various reasons do already know that they use an inferior browser, they just cannot change it. If a growing site gets so slow that the usability is affected, then we have to change our paradigm. It doesn't have to look the same as long as the usability is preserved. I think IE6 needs degraded, but functional pages. Functional hacking for IE is a must, but pure presentational hacking is becoming obsolete. The first one to be convinced is not the client. I believe we have to convince our co-workers, since the old paradigm was promoted by us. Ingo __ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
Re: [css-d] Pragmatic look at our CSS future - ripped from: The CSSOverlords
> From: Nancy Johnson [mailto:njohnso...@gmail.com] > > The problem with getting rid of IE6 is too many internal > applications > especially in the business community will only work in IE6, > like the > internal application we use. > > From: Michael Stevens > > So, who's the rocket scientist that decided it would be > a good idea to write > applications with ONE and ONLY ONE viable program to run > those programs? Yes, unfortunately we are all paying the price for bad decisions and practices undertaken by a) poor application developers b) short-sighted IT departments. These past mistakes, together with an unwillingness to rectify them, have cost our industry a LOT of money, and have held back innovation dramatically. This is not to say you cannot ostracise IE6 users from your website. Just be aware that some of your target audience will not be able to view your site in all its glory. If your site has a target audience of 'everyone', that's bad news. If you chose to alienate people accessing from within a poor business environment (and, to some extent, those on older hardware), that's completely up to you. - Bobby __ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
Re: [css-d] Pragmatic look at our CSS future - ripped from: The CSSOverlords
-Original Message- From: Nancy Johnson [mailto:njohnso...@gmail.com] The problem with getting rid of IE6 is too many internal applications especially in the business community will only work in IE6, like the internal application we use. There is no budget to make the updates and I'm sure they are massive. Nancy -- So, who's the rocket scientist that decided it would be a good idea to write applications with ONE and ONLY ONE viable program to run those programs? Writing a stand-alone program is one thing... writing a web application for use in a browser and targeting the worst browser possible isn't exactly a smart move. But then again I guess we ARE talking about "big business" aren't we? No brain trusts there... Mike __ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
