Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine in IE | Hacker News Reader

Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine in IE

blog.reybango.com

23 pointsjongalloway26 comments

This blog post is misleading. The non-support was specifically aimed at older versions of IE.

And besides, IE has not proven the most reliable of partners, I totally get their move. You never know when your phone's gonna be red hot with IE9 customers because Microsoft decided to update some obscure DLL which breaks CSS line-height in em's or something...

There are a few replies here citing that the IE non-support was for older versions, which got me thinking about these questions:

* Why is it that IE is judged based on versions that are years old, yet every other browser is judged by the latest release?

* If non-support is aimed at older versions of IE, why wasn't the author of this post able to register with a recent version of IE?

I can kind of answer the first one myself: IE is judged on old versions because users persistently refuse to upgrade IE. The causes of this are widely discussed, but the fact remains that far too many people using IE are using an old version.

That's a stereotype, which makes it pretty lazy thinking to reject IE categorically. If IE works, why not allow it?

1. You've heard the saying, "once bitten, twice shy?" Well, that has been the operative mechanism of developing for IE since, well, pretty much since it came out in the mid-90s. People are just sick of trying.

2. I'm guessing user-agent blocking.

That's how I view it. I see that as an excuse to avoid testing in newer IE versions where most things you would want to do work already. It's always in the details where implementations differ, but that's true between Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and mobile anyway.

I think that you're all wrong. The PayDirt crew was just using lack of support for IE as a manufactured controversy designed to get publicity for their startup.

They succeeded on all counts, just used one of the chapters in the ol' PR playbook. Now all they have to do in a few weeks is remove the signup block (since their code was built to be IE ready) and say hey now due to overwhelming demand we now support IE. Which will get them another blast of publicity ;<).

Our clients who use IE use IE7: saying that IE9 support is IE support is misleading.

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