Ways to compensate for IPB 3.x not fully supporting IE6

[Beatless]

http://www.rockettheme.com/blog/design/336-ie6-end-of-life-at-rockettheme
http://www.joomlapraise.com/team-blog/joomlapraise-joins-ie6-end-of-life-movement.php

"Written by Andy Miller"
Microsoft had complete market dominance with Internet Explorer during this time, and it seemed content to sit on it's haunches and not work towards any kind of compliance in the intervening years. It wasn't until Firefox started to make waves, and began eating away at the browser usage pie, that Microsoft got it's browser development team off the bench and released Internet Explorer 7. This browser was a very small step in the right direction and it was almost universally shunned and all it did was slightly reduce IE6 usage, but certainly was no true competitor to Firefox and the other standards focused browsers in terms of capabilities. Microsoft has now released version 8.0 of it's Internet Explorer product, and even though it stills falls short of most other browsers especially with CSS Level 3 support, it at least has support for CSS Level 2.1. For more detailed information you can check out this great CSS selectors chart IE6 has long had a reputation of being a security risk. This is mostly due to the extremely long release cycles and the lack of security patches. This has only multiplied over time as the updates get fewer and the number of security exploits increases. There have been numerous articles about these issues, and to this day several issues, including critical ones are left un-patched. this alone should be reason enough to upgrade your browser, but the one that affects our life here at RocketTheme the most is the lack of features and capabilities of this browser. Supporting Internet Explorer 6 has long been the bane of the web developer. Even without the CSS support, the quirks, bugs, and just plain erroneous handling of common XHTML and CSS elements means that a design that works flawlessly in Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc, requires hours or even days of 'hacking' to get it working reliably on IE6. Also due to features that are just not available in IE6, designers often have to sacrifice design elements or layouts entirely just to ensure that IE6 viewers are not left with a big mess on their displays. It's long been said that IE6 is holding back the web, and this has never been truer than it is today. The latest versions of Chrome, Safari 4, Firefox 3.5, and Opera 10 support innovative features that allow web applications be in the same league as their desktop counterparts. Many business, organizations, and even entire countries have already made a stand and have stopped supporting IE6 on their sites and applications. Now it's RocketTheme's turn. As of January 1st, 2010, RocketTheme will no longer be creating templates, themes, extensions, etc, that support Internet Explorer 6. We will however continue to support IE6 in our existing templates released up to this point. Internet Explorer 8 is slowly but surely increasing it's market share and IE6 is on a slow but steady decline in usage. According to w3schools.com, from the high in November 2003 of 71.2%, IE6 usage had dropped to 32% in January of 2008, and 18.5% in January 2009. By January 2010, this percentage should be around 6-8%. With the introduction of Windows 7 this fall, this percentage could be even lower. This usage will never truly dwindle to an inconsequential percentage until all the large sites on the internet stop supporting it. People are generally averse to change, and if things seem to be working, their is no incentive to change or upgrade. An eight year old software product is positively ancient in technology terms, and the upgrade path to IE8, Firefox, Chrome etc is easy and free. The hold outs are almost entirely corporations who have legacy applications that require IE6 broken rendering engine, but now is the time for those businesses to upgrade their core applications or get left behind. To wrap up, here's a quote I'm particularly fond of: "Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."

Regards,

Let's face it, Internet Explorer 6 has had a heck of a run. It was originally released on August 27, 2001 just before the release of Windows XP. At the time of it's release it was a pretty fast, efficient and modern browser. It had partial support for CSS level 1, DOM level 1 and SMIL 2.0. Clearly it was not earth-shattering at the time of it's release, and time has not been kind to it since.

[Rob - Top Web Designs]

Have any of you tried to use IPB without javascript? If I remember correctly IE6 and IE7 come with JS off by default, so I wouldn't be surprised if a fair few of your users are working without it as well as using out of date browsers.

[sunrisecc]

[quote name='Bono' date='22 June 2009 - 09:51 AM' timestamp='1245678688' post='1812438']
And of course if company allows windows update, M$ will enforce upgrading of IE (probably marking IE update as critical) so those users will be up to date.


Yes, but most large corporations do not allow the monthly updates from MS unless the IT test and distribute the updates themselves. The larger the corporation, the stricter the IT department has control. That is why I prefer small business. Discuss and decide is their motto. While in large corporations, it is discuss, discuss, form a committee, discuss, table, and maybe eventually decide.

[Bono]

[quote name='sunrisecc' date='22 June 2009 - 04:05 PM' timestamp='1245679549' post='1812446']
Yes, but most large corporations do not allow the monthly updates from MS unless the IT test and distribute the updates themselves. The larger the corporation, the stricter the IT department has control. That is why I prefer small business. Discuss and decide is their motto. While in large corporations, it is discuss, discuss, form a committee, discuss, table, and maybe eventually decide.


I'm also dealing with smaller companies that is why I said that. And regarding big companies NV, AMD and some other gpu providers are reading site and they are up to date with their browsers.

[bfarber]

IPB should function in IE6 (primarily because almost all javascript functions have proper fallbacks in IPB3), however it won't look pretty.

We have stated we would like to work on IE6 display a little bit over time, but it is not a priority. The display can be worked on without breaking other things based on conditional style sheets.

[SamGranger]

I find this rather amusing. IE6 is crap and I hate it - I have to support ie6 however at my work for a lot of web applications (AJAX etc...). The procentage of IE6 users is huge. It's a big market share. Same thing with IPB's skin, it does not display the same in ie due to the moz borders which makes it look a lot less pretty. Why didn't Invision make it ie6 compatible? There is nothing I can see on IPB3 in a good browser that cannot be achieved for ie6.

[CalendarOfUpdates]

[quote name='SamGranger' date='22 June 2009 - 11:00 AM' timestamp='1245682809' post='1812464']
I find this rather amusing. IE6 is crap and I hate it - I have to support ie6 however at my work for a lot of web applications (AJAX etc...). The procentage of IE6 users is huge. It's a big market share. Same thing with IPB's skin, it does not display the same in ie due to the moz borders which makes it look a lot less pretty. Why didn't Invision make it ie6 compatible? There is nothing I can see on IPB3 in a good browser that cannot be achieved for ie6.

Sam, since we can map skins to useragents, you could make an IE6 compatible skin and map those users to that. Hummm, sounds like a way for an enterprising skinner to make a few bucks. ;)

[sound]

[quote name='CalendarOfUpdates' date='22 June 2009 - 04:47 PM' timestamp='1245685654' post='1812481']
Sam, since we can map skins to useragents, you could make an IE6 compatible skin and map those users to that. Hummm, sounds like a way for an enterprising skinner to make a few bucks. ;)


rather than wait or depend on third parties
couldnt ipb sort something along those lines out
get in a freelancer to knock something up

as its been said and have seen myself , for some it is a large % of current users

[Rikki]

You'll be pleased to know there is now a big improvement in rendering on IE6. It is not perfect and we still don't officially support it (and the experience will not match that of other browsers), but it is a little more presentable for those users still stuck on it.

[sound]

that's great to hear :thumbsup:

[Ditchmonkey]

I'd be happy with a built in browser detection script that warns people about the limitations of IE6 and suggests they use Firefox. I know that a certain percentage of IE6 users are simply non-computer savvy people that have the ability to install a different browser but just don't know any better. And if they don't want to use a different browser (or can't), at least we have done our due diligence as webmasters by warning them prior to their session on the website.

[bfarber]

[quote name='Ditchmonkey' date='22 June 2009 - 02:15 PM' timestamp='1245694535' post='1812547']
I'd be happy with a built in browser detection script that warns people about the limitations of IE6 and suggests they use Firefox. I know that a certain percentage of IE6 users are simply non-computer savvy people that have the ability to install a different browser but just don't know any better. And if they don't want to use a different browser (or can't), at least we have done our due diligence as webmasters by warning them prior to their session on the website.


In the skin just add

Stop using IE6! (or whatever you want displayed here) </if>

<if test="$this->memberData['userAgentKey'] == 'explorer' AND $this->memberData['userAgentVersion'] == 6">

[Brett B]

Rikki tweeted about this once before: http://ie6update.com/

[MaNiAc LRSC]

Is there already a skin, that fully supports IE6 without giving errors? I don't mind if IE6 doesn't give the same WOW experience, but at least there shouldn't be errors!
Big companies use still IE6 as a standard and with no option to upgrade their browsers or users just don't know better.

http://www.germanscooterforum.de
27.000 Members
2,5 Million Posts


I get so many complaints about the incompatability to IE6 after upgrading. I'm really disappointed :-(

[InvisionHQ]

[quote name='bfarber' date='22 June 2009 - 06:50 PM' timestamp='1245696649' post='1812563']
In the skin just add




There is an easy tip to show this alert only 1 time for session?

<if test="$this->memberData['userAgentKey'] == 'explorer' AND $this->memberData['userAgentVersion'] == 6">

Stop using IE6! (or whatever you want displayed here)

</if>

[ciccio5]

UP!

[Michael]

[quote name='ciccio5' date='18 February 2010 - 03:19 PM' timestamp='1266524399' post='1915039']
UP!

Do you have some specific concern that you need addressed? I don't think the official stance on IE6 has changed any: the forum should work in IE6, it just might not look the same as it does in other browsers. If there is actual broken functionality, you can post it as a bug report.

[Invision_ITA]

Isn't possible to force the user to use a specific skin (like LO-FI) that work good with IE6?

[Michael]

Yes, you can do that with the User Agent Management system in IP.Board 3.

[Invision_ITA]

[quote name='Michael' date='18 February 2010 - 11:52 PM' timestamp='1266533535' post='1915106']
Yes, you can do that with the User Agent Management system in IP.Board 3.


ok thanks, i have find Explorer. but i dont understand what i have to set?

[ciccio5]

Select your skin, then click on "manage user agent mapping" and select explorer.

There is a little problem: with explorer this feature doesn't work! Why?

[Invision_ITA]

[quote name='ciccio5' date='19 February 2010 - 12:09 AM' timestamp='1266534571' post='1915113']
Select your skin, then click on "manage user agent mapping" and select explorer.

There is a little problem: with explorer this feature doesn't work! Why?


for me is good. I have set Explorer and the version 6

[bfarber]

[quote name='ciccio5' date='18 February 2010 - 06:09 PM' timestamp='1266534571' post='1915113']
Select your skin, then click on "manage user agent mapping" and select explorer.

There is a little problem: with explorer this feature doesn't work! Why?


Please use the peer to peer forums, or submit a ticket, if you need help with features in the software. This forum is for feature suggestions.