On Friday, August 26, 2011, 12:15:48 PM, bruce.som...@web.de wrote: > One can support IE without making use of proprietary features > available only with IE. That's never a good idea.
While that's easy to say with hindsight, it wasn't so readily apparent at the time and many of us produced applications that: 1. for various reasons, we were commissioned to produce that way; and 2. we had no good argument to counter our customer's requests to do so. For example, 'back in the day' I produced several applications that used the Table of Contents (TOC) interface of Microsoft's HTML Help engine. Microsoft extolled its virtues at the time (mid 1990s) and waxed lyrical about how it could be used for so much more than just Help. At the time, they gave examples of its use in general websites and encouraged us to use it that way. In its favour, it was a quick and easy way to produce 'drill down' interfaces for 'Microsoft-only shops'. Despite my warnings that the application would depend on MSIE (which was 3.x at the time IIRC), the added costs associated with the alternatives made using the HTML Help engine very attractive. Besides, 32-bit Windows was new-ish and we had no reason to suspect that Microsoft would withdraw legacy support in the foreseeable future. All was well until Microsoft discovered a security flaw in the HTML Help engine. Rather than address the actual issue, they elected to hobble the HTML Help engine so that it could no longer be used 'out of the box' over a network. My applications stopped working without warning as customers' machines were automatically updated. There was a fix -- albeit one that involved Registry-burglary -- and I was able to get my customers back up and running... ... until Microsoft discovered yet another security flaw in the HTML Help engine and, once again, rather than address the actual issue they elected to hobble it. Again my applications stopped working without warning. There was another fix that involved yet more Registry- burglary, and so I was again able to get my customers back up and running... ... until IE7 came along when the fixes no longer worked. As some of the applications were mission-critical, customers had no option but to roll back the machines where IE7 had been installed and were obliged to remain on IE6 until the TOC interface of the HTML Help engine could be replaced. Although I wasn't obliged to do so, I wrote a Javascript-based replacement and applied it free of charge to preserve good will. Thankfully, I'd encapsulated the HTML Help stuff, and so it was feasible to do this. Had I coded more openly, my customers could well have been in the position that David describes. Having been there, I can well understand the issue that David highlights and would not be as quick as you to blame the developers as the true problem IMO is that Microsoft 'changed the goalposts' and without warning removed features they'd previously encouraged us to use. With all that said, this is on topic for CSS discussion IMO as it highlights a very good reason to consider support for IE6 for some time yet. -- Geoff ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [css-d@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/
