Why You Should Try and Support IE(6)
Of all the approaches to front-end development, the omission of IE has to draw my ire more than most. Entirely omitting a browser and all of its users from your development support cycle is a red flag that you do not know what you are doing. Furthermore, it leads me to believe that you do not care about Web Standards or webcomm as a whole.
I’ve heard many explanations (read excuses), such as:
- IE6 is 10 years old
- I develop for modern browsers
- I’m on OSX/Linux
- Our users shouldn’t use IE
- I hate IE
I am not saying that everything has to look the same and/or be functional in IE6(+). However, casually dismissing developing for an archaic browser(s) is simply piss poor development practice.
Neglecting IE hurts your bottom line in a plethora of ways, some of which include:
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Accessibility: by omitting IE and any other browser by default, you are automatically cutting out a certain percentage of users from ever using your site. You can say that no one uses IE6 and that may be mostly the case for home use, but there are countless organizations who still have IE6 tied to their enterprise applications (if you can call them that) and/or have IE6 mandated as the only browser available for use. Sounds ludicrous? Sure, but it’s still a reality. Do you know how much time people use the web at work to get stuff done? Of course you do, you do it daily, as do I. Now if you were tied to IE6, your awesome work/play productive days are over, because there are some things that you simply cannot access.
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SEO: simply put, the more users you have, generally the more SEO you are going to achieve, be it organic, social, word-of-mouth, etc., the more traffic that you are generating the better off you are.
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Usability: similar to Accessibility here; in short, if your site is not usable than you are neglecting integral aspects of UX and UI. Ignoring these will inevitably catch up to you, and having to redo anything violates the principle of DRY, to which I have found no good argument against.
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Self-Improvement: the more versatile your skillset, the more marketable you are. Self-explanatory.
Supporting IE6 Gives Back
First off, I am no fan of IE nor do I like supporting it, but as a Standardista that holds webcomm above all else, I’ll enlighten you all to the glories that I have reaped from supporting IE:
- Separation of Behaviors - placing precedence and importance in separating Structure, Presentation and Behavior, from which the most versatile and robust sites benefit from.
- CSS and HTML - I am talking versions, properties, values, units of measure, implementations, elements, attributes, etc.. A nerdy bonus is that along the way you will find juicy nuggets of CSS and HTML history to explain why things are the way they are.
- JavaScript - DOM versions, browser implementations, Graceful Degradation, DOM Scripting, Progressive Enhancement and Unobtrusive JavaScript.
- Cross-Browser resources and solutions - These resources and solutions will enlighten you to the very brightest and bleeding-edge frontiers that are literally sculpting the web as we know it.
All of this intimate knowledge works together to shed light on even larger topics in web development including Separation of Behaviors, the Cascade, Optimization, Reflows, Repaints, Redraws, developing Mobile First and Responsive Development.
I would add that not everything must be functional, or look the same in every browser. I personally am anal retentive about those ideas, but I realize that in many cases this is simply not logical, applicable, or feasible. Besides who wants to spend time fixing bugs in IE when you can be playing with -webkit? On the same hand, once you become familiar with some of IE‘s quirks, fixing them becomes a breeze. I cannot tell you how many times I resolved IE bugs simply by recognizing the doubled-float margin bug or the peekaboo bug. A simple _display:inline for the doubled-float margin bug. _position:relative for the peekaboo bug.
Added bonus: tackling IE6 will solve many problems that also carry over to IE7. Also a new trend that has hit web development circles of late is a claim that IE9 is the new IE6. The reasoning behind this claim does have some validity. IE has a slew of quirks and bugs and by simply ignoring the older versions you are setting yourself up for future development problems.
links for 2011-02-09
links for 2011-02-07
links for 2011-02-06
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Vector
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LOVE LOVE LOVE :hover on 3rd col labeled facts & figured
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fold
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Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder… or NADD
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These are the three rules to Automatic Semi-colon Insertion (ASI):
1. When unable to parse the next token and the previous token was seperated by at least one line terminator
2. When the end of input is reached and the current script cannot be parsed as Ecmascript
3. When a closing curly brace (}) is encounteredThere are a few cases where no ASI is applied, even when the rules above would apply:
1. The resulting semi-colon may not cause an empty statement
2. The resulting semi-colon may not become one of the two semi-colons of a for-header
3. When the next line starts with a regular expressionThere are also a few hidden cases, which you'll have to discover on your own ;)
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Font-Family used in cover art for Raekwon's Only Built for Cuban Linx
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memory leaks happen when circular reference is created between DOM and JS objects.
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Silly Scents
Crayola Silly Scents.The Silly Scents are produced by Crayola in a 16-pack. Colors are approximated
links for 2011-02-05
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ore days in a row, you get even more points. How I see it, points can motivate. It's fun to try to stay on streaks and the
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The literal names MUST be lowercase. No other literal names are allowed. value = false / null / true / object / array / number / string false = %x66.61.6c.73.65 ; false null = %x6e.75.6c.6c ; null true = %x74.72.75.65 ; true
Jackson Quote Inscribed in the Barracks of Virginia Military Institute 06272009
Jackson Quote Inscribed in the Barracks of Virginia Military Institute 06272009
posted by brmeyer
One of the well known quotes of Stonewall Jackson – "You may be whatever you resolve to be." – is inscribed in stone in the gate to the barracks at Virginia Military Institute. Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, VA – June 27, 2009. The description, as entered by the person who uploaded it.
85711909@N00 The ID of the content owner – you can use this to link to their buddy icon. like so brmeyer
jalbertbowdenii Your Flickr screen name.
links for 2011-02-04
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Ajax Toolkit
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Clear Helper is a project intended to develop a Web site using best practices of accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities. The Web site will contain tutorials about using particular Web sites and/or features of them. The Web site is under development.
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Study in a specialized field at an out-of-state college, while paying in-state tuition rates.
Is a degree program you'd like to pursue not available in your state? Have you found a degree program at an out-of-state institution, but the higher tuition is a barrier?
Looking for options with lower tuition?
You're in the right place. For more than 35 years, the SREB Academic Common Market has enabled students to pursue out-of-state college degrees at discounted tuition rates, through agreements among the states and colleges and universities.
Search from more than 1,900 undergraduate and graduate degree programs available in the 16 SREB states. It's quick and easy.
To qualify you must:
* be a resident of one of the 16 SRE
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Cognitive Disabilities and the Web: Where Accessibility and Usability Meet?
Additional definitions of usability"Usability is the extent to which users can access the functionality of a system with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction to achieve specific goals. Employing user/human-centered design processes helps ensure that products or systems are highly usable and meet users' needs. These processes emphasize and utilize the user perspective throughout design, development, and test" (7).
"Usability means that the people who use a product can do so quickly and easily to accomplish their own tasks" (6)
"Usability means making products and systems easier to use, and matching them more closely to user needs and requirements" (33).
"Usability is the measure of the quality of a user's experience when interacting with a product or system — whether a Web site, a software application, mobile technology, or any user-operated device" (34).
Return to the main article
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Looking to save money on college tuition? The Academic Common Market helps state residents attend college in other states at in-state tuition rates, in selected areas of study.
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site that has design and navigation ideally suited to the cognitively disabled population is
links for 2011-01-30
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Facebook’s engineers actually believe this idea will protect anyone’s identity, then their understanding of their own product is shockingly, unimaginably poor.
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Unlike web data formats, where HTML is an important one, but not the only one, and web protocols, where HTTP has a similar status, there is only one Web naming/addressing technology: URIs.
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs, aka URLs) are short strings that identify resources in the web: documents, images, downloadable files, services, electronic mailboxes, and other resources. They make resources available under a variety of naming schemes and access methods such as HTTP, FTP, and Internet mail addressable in the same simple way. They reduce the tedium of "log in to this server, then issue this magic command …" down to a single click.
It is an extensible technology: there are a number of existing addressing schemes, and more may be incorporated over time.
Eat At URL’s Sign
Eat At URL’s Sign
posted by .schill
I first photographed this neon sign in 2005 at Yahoo! HQ in Sunnyvale. It’s interesting to note that the colors pop a lot more on this iPhone photo. The description, as entered by the person who uploaded it.
12289718@N00 The ID of the content owner – you can use this to link to their buddy icon. like so .schill
jalbertbowdenii Your Flickr screen name.