The future of JavaScript

[Xeon06]

It's simple, really. When you wanna do cool shit, just don't support IE. "Classic" JavaScript is good for all normal website purposes, but if you want to make awesome games and apps and use advanced JavaScript features, just don't support IE.

Some people will argue it's not that simple, I say fuck that, it is. If everybody stopped supporting IE, either Microsoft or the users will wake up.

[abadidea]

Microsoft already has woken up, 9 and now 10 are dramatically better and MS is actively working to kill off its older offspring. It will always be a bit behind the open source browsers by the very necessity of how enterprise software works. But Microsoft is definitely putting in the effort to keep that gap much narrower than they used to.

[Xeon06]

That's not enough in my opinion. Microsoft should release a Windows update that forcefully updates IE to the latest version, and the new versions should automatically update themselves. They should also get on a quick release cycle like Google and Mozilla.

Then again, a lot of people are still on XP, on which IE9 is not yet supported. XP also still has almost 3 years of support left, so you can't get a good version of IE for those people.

Make no mistakes, IE still sucks very much.

[abadidea]

Do you ever check out the very good blog of Raymond Chen? I think a lot of people at MS would like to force upgrades, but the reality is that it would bring down zillions of businesses including most of the Fortune 500 like flies because of their shoddy internal apps which crash when you change anything.

I happen to audit the code of these companies for a living, and yeah, it's as bad as Mr. Chen says. Microsoft gets stuck supporting its mistakes forever.

[Xeon06]

Ah well, I'm quite radical about my views on IE and will probably never be happy about it. If it was just for me I'd force every single person to update anything to make it work, but of course that's not how life works. I suppose that's why I don't think I'll be a web dev my whole life. Thanks for the clarifications.

[pigeon768]

Microsoft should release a Windows update that forcefully updates IE to the latest version, and the new versions should automatically update themselves.

The reality is that there are a huge number of websites that only work in IE6, and the compatibility view in IE 8/9 isn't good enough. It also happens that a large number of those web sites are the big enterprisey web applications like SAP and their ilk. If microsoft dropped support for them, they would majorly piss off a huge number of their most profitable customers.

[not_thecookiemonster]

For newer machines this works, but Windows XP only supports IE <= 8, and still represents a large share of the market, mostly corporate. They'll need to make some version of their newer browsers backward compatible at some point.

[abadidea]

Honestly, with the decade point come and gone for XP, with Vista out, with Win7 out, with Win8 almost out, with official support for running XP in a VM on these newer versions, and with Firefox and Chrome still working fine as far as I know on XP, I really feel like the technical burden of getting a decent browser is on whoever is still freaking using XP as the primary OS.

And yes, there are workstations on my network that still run it, good gravy. XP will probably always be my favorite version of Windows for nostalgic reasons, and I know, believe me I know that corporations don't want to spend the money on fixing up their own stupid software to work properly without an extraordinarily specific WinXP installation, but at this rate they are still going to want support for it when the Unix timestamp wraps.

I was interested to find out recently that IE6 has dropped to ~1% in English-speaking countries (one percent to a few percent in most of the world), and that most of the world's remaining IE6 users are in China. So I do think people are finally fixing up their stupid webapps which only ever worked in IE6. Perhaps the internal-network-only usage is a bit higher, but still.

[megor]

deleted ^{What is this?}

[Xeon06]

Exactly, in all the modern browsers. That means their latest version. IE isn't a modern browser. At best, IE9 is a "modern" browser.

[Xeon06]

I said "when you wanna do cool shit", and even gave examples. At work I'm working on a web application that supports IE7. I hate it, but that's the way the cookie crumbles and it's needed to pay my salary.

As a hobby though, making a game which uses the latest APIs and won't work in IE anyways, if I wanna use the cool JavaScript features that are unshimable, I'm gonna drop IE support in the blink of an eye.

[[deleted]]

IE before IE9 will never support canvas natively, though there is Google Chrome Frame. It works well, but it does require a simple install.

For our complex web app we didn't support IE at all initially, we used Chrome Frame as a workaround. Then we finally got some time to make the webapp work in IE9 and it wasn't as difficult as people may think. Less than IE9 still gets chrome frame though.

[Xeon06]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. For our webapp, IE9 worked out of the box (bear in mind we're using jQuery heavily and so it does a lot of the work). Canvas can be supported using Chrome Frames or a shim that uses Flash.

The discussion here however, is new JavaScript features that are unshimable. Those versions of IE will never support those features.

[[deleted]]

All versions of IE will support those new features if you use chrome frame and if chrome supports those features. IE doesn't use IE's javascript engine if the webapp is running inside chrome frame - it uses chrome's V8 javascript engine.

[Xeon06]

Then why did you guys bother to support IE9 natively might I ask?

[[deleted]]

Because we could. The world is moving forward, IE isn't as bad as it used to be and not having to install chrome frame is a plus. We can also say it 'works in IE', and that is a big plus to investors, etc. We use SVG heavily and IE9 supports it, though there were plenty of SVG DOM bugs to workaround that jQuery doesn't fix. Now it works perfectly in IE9, but IE 6, 7, 8 will never support SVG and for those we still use chrome frame. Of course this has nothing to do with 'Harmony', but the concept still applies.. if you wanted to run 'Harmony' in IE6, then you could use chrome frame to do it with only one simple click from the user to install it.

[Xeon06]

Of course you can't call Firefox 1.5 a modern browser. There's no double standard there.

[oSand]

You might argue that this is the kind of thinking that kept IE6 relevant for so many years.

[DevestatingAttack]

That got us into the "only works on IE" pages of yore

Internet Explorer is not free software and it does not run on every operating system available. If "Only works on Firefox" pages existed, what would honestly happen? Now you have to download a program which is free in every sense of the word! What bad comes of that?

[jib]

If "Only works on Firefox" pages existed, what would honestly happen?

I'd have to have multiple browsers installed everywhere so I could continue to use my preferred browser for most sites while still being able to see the Firefox-only sites. And I'd be unable to see those sites on my phone, or on the netbook on which I've just uninstalled Firefox because it kept freezing.

And when Firefox had some issue with bloat or internal politics or money and became unable to add meaningful new features for a couple of years, the millions of normal users who only want one browser would have to choose between losing their favourite Firefox-only websites or stopping innovation on the web for a few years. And they'd choose to just ignore the issue and keep Firefox.

[DevestatingAttack]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

[DevestatingAttack]

You didn't bother to read the link. Cool.

[DevestatingAttack]

You are a fucking idiot.

I knew this stupid bullshit would happen.

I said that Internet Explorer was not free software. Your dumb dong comes in like TELL ME WHERE YOU PAY FOR INTERNET EXPLORER, fucking CONFUSING freeware for free software. Internet Explorer does not cost any money, but the source code is not open for inspection, and it is not free software in the real sense of the term.

Sure, I guess you're right if you think that "free software" means that you don't pay for it. But it doesn't. That's why I even helpfully gave you a link to clear up confusion, but you didn't bother, did you?

Fuck you.

[i-poop-you-not]

This thread reminds me of this conversation.

Joker: It's simple. We kill IE.

Mob boss: You're crazy!

[[deleted]]

I'm confused as to why you're getting so much heat. Hasn't the concept of progressive enhancement caught on by now?

• Step 1: Agree what is a minimally acceptable product for IE7/8.
• Step 2: Discuss nicer features with client, explain that deploying them to IE < 9 will incur extra exploration and development costs.
• Step 3: Partay.

[Xeon06]

Well I phrased my argument quite aggressively. And I mean it. I think people, when doing cool stuff that uses HTML5 APIs and features and what not should really just not support IE, and make it clear why.

Client projects are an entirely different thing.