Damn you, Internet Explorer!!!

[tannercampbell]

Just launched: http://tcconsultingservices.net

I’m running all the major browsers on my PC, but I forgot I recently upgraded IE from 8 to 9 and then again to 10. So I tested it in what I though was 8 and am realizing now that wasn’t the case. So I changed the user agent in safari to IE 8 and saw a couple issues with the menu and some of the headers in the footer and minor alignment issues. Most pressing is the menu, could someone have a look and tell me why 8 is making my font really heavy?

Also … I’m using the Nivo Slider and I notice that it doesn’t even show up for ie 7 and under. I don’t know if I care too much about that because most people are on 8 now but I’m curious as to why.

Thanks,
Tanner

[CoryB]

IE8 does not support font weights that I know of, so that’s why the font is heavy. As for ie7 I would not worry. I would just make a ie8 specific stylesheet and load that with a conditional comment. The slider might want to check the docs to see if it supports ie7. If not there are other options for plugins that do. Other than that very nice clean website!

[Anonymous]

Every web developer should simply stop supporting IE8 for their websites. 23% of web users still use IE8 and because developers go the extra mile to make the site look good on that crappy browsers, web users won’t bother upgrading to chrome or Firefox and the use of IE8 wont drop. So i say screw IE8 and bellow. When users start realizing that all the websites look shitty, they will most likely switch browsers.

[Alen]

@Jarolin

> they will most likely switch browsers.

Unless they’re behind company computer with IE pre-installed.

It’s all about target audience.

[jurotek]

Job well done in a cross-browser environment without complaining is what separates the good from average.

If you don’t like certain browsers and how your site renders in them, than you surely got some issues to deal with. It’s really getting old to point finger constantly at some IE versions.

Wish people stop doing that and actually start taking responsibility for how they do their job.

[Alen]

> When is Microsoft going to get its shit together and force people to update?

They are forcing people to upgrade, but you have to buy new. It’s really simple, if you have customers that are behind IE, just serve simple ie.css stylesheet to them. Look at your stats and make informed decision whether to support IE or not.

Bitching about it here will not solve your issues.

[Paulie_D]

Let’s keep it civil folks.

This problem has been solved and this isn’t the place for re-hashing the older IE ‘hate’.

[Senff]

> Wish people stop doing that and actually start taking responsibility for how they do their job.

+1

9 out of 10 times when people complain about their site breaking in IE, it’s because of “bad” code, typos, or them trying to implement modern features that weren’t around when IE8 was released. Other browsers are more forgiving and “clean up” (or fix) bad code/typos. IE doesn’t. Which, in my opinion, is how it should be. It teaches us to code better/cleaner.

[ElijahFowler]

9 out of 10 times when people complain about their site breaking in IE, it’s because of “bad” code, typos, or them trying to implement modern features that weren’t around when IE8 was released. Other browsers are more forgiving and “clean up” (or fix) bad code/typos. IE doesn’t. Which, in my opinion, is how it should be. It teaches us to code better/cleaner.

I agree, but IE6-8 have a lot of CSS bugs that Microsoft never fixed. Like the Double Margin bug, IE8’s collapsing image when a max-width was set. The list goes on and on. Sure, you should make your markup as clean as possible and it helps, but it doesn’t fix the other problems that Microsoft chose/chooses to ignore. Also when it comes to features that IE doesn’t support, Microsoft could very well update IE like any other browser does, yet they choose not to so they can sell the next product. Rather underhanded if you ask me. The internet is growing, kind of like a child; a good parent would never force their child to wear clothes from infancy.

But all in all, even with IE’s grievances most of the bugs it has are easily fixed if you have a IE specific sheet or class. But even as that stands, my company stopped supporting IE7 at the beginning of the year and will be dropping support IE8 sometime within this year. IE8 is less than 10% of users, everyone is either upgrading Windows, or using Chrome/Firefox instead with the imminent death of XP. With that and China making a deal with Canonical to use Ubuntu the older versions of IE will soon disappear. Also, with IE10’s automatic updates they should keep on top of some things, hopefully for the better. Here’s hopin’!

[Kitty Giraudel]

> Wish people stop doing that and actually start taking responsibility for how they do their job.

This quote applies to Microsoft too. Just sayin’.

[Anonymous]

> “bad” code, typos, or them trying to implement modern features that weren’t around when IE8 was released.

And that’s exactly why IE8 usage needs to drop. It’s an ancient browser that people still use, and it can’t keep up with today’s HTML features. The only way this browser dies is by not supporting it. And if certain things work perfectly fine on all other browsers BUT IE, its not “bad code”. It’s just IE.

[ElijahFowler]

Oh, also, The reason that your slider isn’t showing up in IE7 and down is because The Nivo slider is built on jQuery, and jQuery no longer supports IE7 down. Now you can fix that by using jQuery Migrate, just include it in your html and you should see it work.

Font-weight has been supported in IE since version 3. The first way to test older IE versions is to bring up the page in IE10, hit F12, click “Browser Mode” on the toolbar that and select the version you wish to test. Make sure that the “Document Mode” is correct for the version you are testing too or you won’t see the right style. The second way is to use download IE Tester. It works fairly well and catches things that IE10 with a different “Browser Mode” misses. Using Safari to test IE is not a good idea generally. They use a completely different rendering engine than IE and so it will never be quite right.

HTH,

-Elijah

[Alen]

The place I’m currently contracting for has 3000 employees in the building. More than 75% are still on XP or Vista. In my particular case, I have to support IE for their internal infrastructure. So you can’t just “drop support”. Again it’s all about your use case, and your target audience.

[Author]

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