> > This is getting silly. The last thing I want to do is support > > Netscape 6. > > The context was legacy systems. And the decision what to > support or not is always here to make.
Yes, it was people 'stuck' with Window 2000 or other OS that cannot run any IE past 6. And your 'suggestion' was: > > > IE6 is not the only browser. Get some older versions of > > > Opera, Netscape As I said, this is silly. Instead of having IE6, which *most* websites make an effort to support, they would have Netscape 6, which nobody tests or supports. So if people followed this advise, developers would have another legacy browser to support. How would this be an improvement? > > When IE5/6 were created, HTML 4.01, DOM2 and CSS 2.1 *did not exist*. > > IE5 - 1999, IE6 - 2001 > HTML 4.01 - 1999 > CSS2 - 1998 > DOM2 - 2000 > If I remember correctly.. They did existed and drafts started long > before that.. Note that I said "were created", not "were released" - development starts 2-years before release. But that said, I stand corrected on some of these dates. The reason I probably remembered HTML 4.01 & CSS 2 coming a couple years later is because I continued to code using HTML 3.2 & CSS 1 past the 'release' of the new standards since *no browsers* supported them. (ditto for HTML 2 and *no* CSS a few years earlier) BTW, IE was the first browser to follow the original CSS standard almost 100%. --------------------------- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets Although the CSS1 specification was completed in 1996 and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3 was released in that year featuring some limited support for CSS, it would be more than three years before any web browser achieved near-full implementation of the specification. Internet Explorer 5.0 for the Macintosh, shipped in March 2000, was the first browser to have full (better than 99 percent) CSS1 support, surpassing Opera, which had been the leader since its introduction of CSS support 15 months earlier... As of July 2008, no (finished) browser has fully implemented CSS2... Problems with browsers' patchy adoption of CSS along with errata in the original specification led the W3C to revise the CSS2 standard into CSS2.1, which may be regarded as something nearer to a working snapshot of current CSS support in HTML browsers. Some CSS2 properties which no browser had successfully implemented were dropped, and in a few cases, defined behaviours were changed to bring the standard into line with the predominant existing implementations. CSS2.1 became a Candidate Recommendation on February 25, 2004, but CSS2.1 was pulled back to Working Draft status on June 13, 2005,[3] and only returned to Candidate Recommendation status on July 19, 2007. --------------------------- As was the case with many web 'standards', CSS2 was later revised to follow the defacto standards created by the browsers. As recently as 2007 the working group was *still* working on updating CSS2, so claiming CSS2 "has no lifecycle" is not totally accurate either. It will be similarly interesting to see how CSS3 changes between now and its release - and if there is a CSS 3.1 (but I think the W3C has learned to not rush things as much). > But once it becomes "border-radius" start to support it and don't > pretend it does not exist. This comment is spurious. Even today, there is little you cannot do in CSS with IE6. It is missing a few specialized selectors (which are rarely used), and a few things require minor syntax differences (aka, hacks), but there is little of consequence that IE6 'ignored' in 2000. More importantly for the dominant browser, the 99% it did have was stable and fast. Opera had very few users, so were freer to 'experiment' with higher levels of adherence to CSS2, but they paid for this with many buggy versions. If I had to choose between a stable IE6 or *slightly better* CSS2 support in a flakey browser, I'd take IE6 as it was. But we are not discussing whether IE6/7/8 should have had more forward- looking CSS support. The topic was how to deal with IE6 *today*. And on this topic, I still believe recommending old versions of Netscape is not realistic. > > Many features in these new 'standards' STARTED as proprietary > > Microsoft extensions - like IFRAMEs, zIndex, opacity, many DHTML > > features, etc. If MS had 'followed standards' instead of innovating... > > today's browsers would be far less capable... > > True. That's positive. Your assertion that MS was "too proprietary" with IE is the other comment I responded to. But it seems you have retracted this now. So thanks for correcting me on a few dates, but it doesn't change my underlying points about IE 5/6. Personally, I don't go out of my way to support IE6, except when developing generic widgets, which I feel should support it wherever practical. But for normal, individual websites, I'm usually content with graceful degradation, which actually requires very little extra effort. A few CSS hacks and I'm done! Cheers, /Kevin On Jul 28, 1:39 pm, uicoded <uico...@gmail.com> wrote: > > This is getting silly. The last thing I want to do is support Netscape > > 6. > > The context was legacy systems. And the decision what to support or > not is always here to make. > > > When IE5/6 were created, HTML 4.01, DOM2 and CSS 2.1 *did not exist*. > > IE5 - 1999, IE6 - 2001 > HTML 4.01 - 1999 > CSS2 - 1998 > DOM2 - 2000 > If I remember correctly.. They did existed and drafts started long > before that.. > HTML5 illustrates it well. Despite being far from recommendation, > Opera, Google, Mozilla are moving forward. > Again, where we see MS in this picture? (Ok, they are trying.. But > really?!) > > > Many features in these new 'standards' STARTED as proprietary > > Microsoft extensions - like IFRAMEs, zIndex, opacity, many DHTML > > features, etc. If MS had 'followed standards' instead of innovating... > > today's browsers would be far less capable. But lucky for us, both MS > > and Netscape pushed the boundaries to advance browser technology. I've > > been developing since Netscape 2 was "the next big thing", so I > > welcomed, and used, each of these advancements. > > Adding proprietary extensions have now become *standard* - just prefix > > them like -moz- or -webkit-. The good extensions will eventually > > become standards. But when "border-radius" becomes a standard, it will > > not work exactly like -moz-border-radius - just as the standard box- > > model is not identical to the MS box-model it evolved from. > > True. That's positive. > But once it becomes "border-radius" start to support it and don't > pretend it does not exist. > > > Frankly, it's a testament to IE6 that an 8-year old browser can STILL > > do *almost anything* up-to-date browsers can do, with very few code > > tweaks. > > And there should be no surprise, because the basic stack (if I omit > XHTML) remains the same. > The surprise comes with 'new' IE versions. Such incarnations of the > same can threaten sanity of some developers (http://youngisrael- > stl.org/images/webdesign.png) > > > No developer has to support IE6 if he doesn't want to, but these > > "let's kill IE6" ideas just don't fly, for all the good reasons > > already mentioned. > > Few people want to kill something. Let it die out. IF there is an > option. No one will pay more for a browser XYZ support. > The only logical reason would be: > a) extra benefit to the user (user will cover the cost) > b) restriction of the user (user has no choice) > c) provider is vested in XYZ > > >And those who think MS was wrong to include > > 'proprietary features' in IE should study the evolution of modern > > browsers. > > IE6 played an important role in the history. > Beyond the post browser war period, it helped to boost many > communities e.g. jQuery, WaSP.. (can't remember any 'pro-IE6' group) > and web standards awareness in general. > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "jQuery Development" group. 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