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Browser compatibility

by Neil Morgan
11 replies
Hey Guys

With all the whizzy new stuff that's available in HTML, CSS, Javascript, Flash etc, where do you personally draw the line with regard to browser compatibility?

For example, do you still make sure that your site/software/blog works in IE6? It can be VERY annoying when everything looks great in all browsers except that horror.

I just pulled off the stats for my busiest site (in the IM field) and the ratios are:

42.00% Firefox 3.5
15.40% IE 8.0
11.60% IE 7.0
10.40% Firefox 3.0
7.80% IE 6.0
5.20% Chrome 3.0
2.20% Safari 4.0
1.60% Chrome 4.0
3.8% Others

...so IE6 is still in use by quite a number of people unfortunately.

Cheers,

Neil
#browser #compatibility
  • Profile picture of the author zincOnline
    Designing for IE6 can be a pain sometimes, but unfortunately it is essential when designing sites.

    You can check the "official" stats here -
    w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

    Design your sites in FF, they should then be compatible with IE8, Safari etc

    Then check the sites in IE7, 6
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  • Profile picture of the author KarlWarren
    There are a lot of IE6 users, I'm staggered by FireFox's share though.
    It's to be expected with the market you're targeting though. I would
    expect a site in the Weight Loss/Dating Niche to have more of a swing
    to IE though.
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  • Profile picture of the author Neil Morgan
    In case anyone was wondering what the "others" are:

    1.00% Firefox 2.0
    0.60% Mozilla 1.9
    0.60% Android 0
    0.40% Opera 0
    0.40% Opera 10.0
    0.20% iPhone 0
    0.20% Google Wireless Transcoder 0
    0.20% Opera 9.6
    0.20% Mozilla 1.8

    Cheers,

    Neil
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  • Profile picture of the author Gary King
    I go with later stuff and make a best effort on IE 6.

    One tip - if you are going to consider IE 6, start checking it right away - it's maddening to get mostly finished with a project, pull up the old dinosaur IE 6 and see your beautiful design in a jumbled mess!

    Sometimes you can get away with just adding conditional IE statements to add an extra break tag or something to help with IE6. e.g. // if lt IE 7 //

    (I've used slashes here instead of the proper syntax to help prevent any formatting issues, just search for it and you'll find examples with proper code).

    Hope it helps!

    Gary
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    • Profile picture of the author Elle Holder
      Originally Posted by Gary King View Post

      One tip - if you are going to consider IE 6, start checking it right away - it's maddening to get mostly finished with a project, pull up the old dinosaur IE 6 and see your beautiful design in a jumbled mess!
      Gary
      Oh, this is so true. At least if you keep checking as you go, you have an easier time finding out what needs to be corrected/fixed in your code.

      A few times I've forgotten this very important step, and after a few days of dinking around to get my layout just perfect, I remember to fire up IE6 and check. Then I have a few more days of dinking around trying to find out what IE doesn't like! What a waste of time!

      My busiest site gets 17% of its traffic from IE6, so for the time being, I still have to make those visitors happy.
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  • Profile picture of the author Neil Morgan
    Great posts guys.

    I've found out a lot of this from bitter experience.

    From memory, the whole "float" thing is just too painful in IE6.

    Neil
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  • Profile picture of the author mywebwork
    IE6 is a necessary evil when designing sites, as your statistics show it is still a popular browser. I keep a machine specifically configured with IE6 for just that purpose.

    One of the maddening issues with IE6 is its inability to display transparent PNG graphics. In actual fact it will display them, but not 24-bit PNGs with alpha channel.

    I found the following article handy for converting transparent PNG's to display properly on IE6

    How to make a transparent PNG image for IE6 using The GIMP Matthew Capewell’s Blog

    Of course an alternative is to use transparent GIF's, which IE6 will display correctly.

    Bill
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  • Profile picture of the author Neil Morgan
    I had forgotten about the transparent png problem with IE6.

    What a time waster that was on a site I developed in the summer. I had to go through all the images and change them to transparent gifs.

    I thought I was being hip and trendy using pngs

    What about the horrendous problems with floats for columns in IE6 - is it better just to use tables from the get-go?

    Or will the web 2.0 thought-police knock my door down in the middle of the night for daring to even mention such an atrocity?

    Cheers,

    Neil
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    • Profile picture of the author mywebwork
      Originally Posted by Neil Morgan View Post

      I had forgotten about the transparent png problem with IE6.

      What a time waster that was on a site I developed in the summer. I had to go through all the images and change them to transparent gifs.
      I feel your pain Neil, I have an online application that uses PNG's. I applied the fix that I linked to in my post to all of them - all 182 of them!

      It was a long day...

      Bill
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    • Profile picture of the author SPress
      Originally Posted by Neil Morgan View Post

      I had forgotten about the transparent png problem with IE6.

      What a time waster that was on a site I developed in the summer. I had to go through all the images and change them to transparent gifs.

      I thought I was being hip and trendy using pngs

      What about the horrendous problems with floats for columns in IE6 - is it better just to use tables from the get-go?

      Or will the web 2.0 thought-police knock my door down in the middle of the night for daring to even mention such an atrocity?

      Cheers,

      Neil
      IMO, you go with what works! The "though-police" aren't putting money in your pocket or bettering your life in any way.

      If your code loads quickly and renders correctly then that should be the primary concern. On the other hand, I do very little coding myself these days, and probably would've never said something like that years ago when I was neck deep in writing it

      The "length" of your code used to be a concern as google admitted to consuming only a certain amount of characters, but that hasn't been an issue for years either...so feel free to put those types of issues aside and concentrate on building a business

      Cheers!

      Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author Neil Morgan
    so feel free to put those types of issues aside and concentrate on building a business
    Don't worry, I did - a loooooooooooooooooong time ago.

    Just trying to provoke some thoughts in others who haven't yet seen the light.

    Cheers,

    Neil
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