[development] Re: [CS dev] Help with a CivicSpace Theme Layout... (Read it, you know you want to! :)

[Justin Davies]

Adrian,

I did not mean my response to be foul mouthed, but we both got the  
same conclusion: if it is too much hassle let it go.  We just got  
there through different routes. I did not mean to offend anyone with  
my response.

I am fully aware of having to accommodate what I would term "legacy"  
systems, but unfortunately the web is not a case of lowest common  
denominator like some systems, but rather the most widely used  
systems, and IE5 on OS9/X is not it.

If it is a case of "a few minutes and it will work on IE5", then I am  
all for people trying to support it.  If it is a case that it takes 2  
more weeks to push a feature, or design, then it really is a waste of  
time for all concerned when talking about the number we are talking  
about.

Justin


On 14 Nov 2005, at 22:52, Adrian Simmons wrote:

> Justin Davies wrote:
>> In all honesty, I don't think you have to worry about old Macs.
> Well, maybe, maybe not. It really all depends on a particular site  
> and what the audience uses. Macs are reliable, they often go on for  
> years and years. There are plenty out there still in active use.
>
>> forcing people away from an old, non-standards based browser on a  
>> very old Mac is not going to loose too many users.
> I hate to be in the position of defending a Microsoft browser but  
> lets set some records straight here.
>
> IE5 mac is an entirely different product from IE5 on Windows.
> At the time IE5 mac was released it had *the* *most* *complete* web  
> standards support of *any* available browser. Better than Mozilla,  
> Opera, Konqueror, better than all of them.
>
>> 90% of Mac users use Safari or a Mozilla variant, and those should  
>> be the people to concentrate on.
> 90% of *OS X* users. There are still plenty of people out there  
> using OS 9. As a percentage of the web they may be small, but they  
> are there. IE5 mac is remains the best browser available for OS 9.  
> The last versions of Mozilla available on OS 9 were around Mozilla  
> 1.3 IIRC, and at that point Mozilla was still bloated and buggy.
>
>> You have to bear in mind that IE users on the Mac are used to  
>> websites not working properly.
> Nonsense. I find most of them still work fairly well, its really  
> only quite advanced CSS layouts that start to break.
>
>> Not because the designers do it wrong, but because the browser is  
>> sh*t.
> Not true. That's really over stepping the mark. IE5mac is a solid  
> browser. So good that despite my antipathy to Microsoft it was my  
> main browser on OS 9 for quite some time, and even on OS X when it  
> first came out.
>
> Yes it's a dead browser. Yes OS 9 is a dead OS. Yes it has some  
> shortcomings in the CSS department. Yes it has other major flaws  
> (can't control plugins with javascript for one). Both have been  
> superseded by better things. But lets not reject IE5mac on the  
> basis of opinionated foul-mouthed nonsense like this.
>
> We're about building communities, and communities are diverse things.
>
> There are workarounds if the problem is with CSS, eg: http:// 
> www.premonition.co.uk/cssd/ie51-only.html
>
> Javascript gets a bit trickier, but we try to make sure that  
> degrades gracefully anyway.
>
> It all boils down to this - IE5mac is decent browser used by people  
> on an old OS, they make up a small and diminishing part of the webs  
> population. If there is a simple and quick way of fixing problems  
> with it then lets support it, and conversely if it's taking too  
> much time to fix let it go. But at least make an informed decision  
> instead of rejecting it out of hand.
>
> -- 
> adrinux (aka Adrian Simmons) <http://adrinux.perlucida.com>
> e-mail <mailto:adrinux at gmail.com>
> AOL/Yahoo IM: perlucida, Microsoft: adrian at perlucida.com