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JQuery Browser Rejection

plugins.jquery.com

6 pointsjmonegro10 comments

I hate browser rejection of any kind. Even in a worst-case scenario, just setup a browser redirection that sends IE6 to a stripped down version of the site. There are a lot of people who have no choice about their browser and can't update for various reasons; why punish them?

I agree that you shouldn't punish users that don't have a choice, but it's not always practical or possible to just send them to a stripped down version.

For read-only sites, fine. But IE6 could cause some serious problems for many web apps that haven't properly been tested for them.

There can be very good reasons for "punishing" them. The development time required to cater to IE6's idiosyncrasies may simply not be justified if the site's target market is not business or people during work hours. Providing a substandard experience is often worse than no experience (look at it later when you're not at work).

Then there's the activism angle - only by applying pressure, one site at a time, can the IE curse be gradually eliminated. The total wasted man-hours catering to its quirks is exceeded only by the hours wasted producing weapons and religion. sigh

Agreed. Every time I see someone use Hotmail or some other shitty service that flat out rejects some browsers my blood boils a little bit. I hate IE6 as much as the next guy but at least let them see what a mess their crippled browser makes of the site.

Since I use jQuery, I can work around most CSS and Javascript compatibility problems IE6 and IE7 throw at me, so long as the user has javascript enabled. My biggest problem is that among my userbase, 25% of sessions on the application my company runs have javascript turned off, and that number is 30% among the IE6 sessions. (We've got a lot of conservative corporate customers who lock down their user's workstations.) This jQuery plugin doesn't help me at all; the users who pose the biggest problem would never even run the browser detection.

To clarify, my problem isn't that I'm having trouble rejecting IE6 users who have javascript turned off. My problem is that I'm required to support them with the best experience I can offer them. These users represent high-revenue customers.

Not very effective at rejecting browsers with JavaScript turned off - if that;s something that's important.

If you must filter then best done at the server in my opinion - then you can render a page that is tailored to the specific circumstances.

Didn't Chrome frame already come out? Why are we still doing this?

What is the actual likelihood of someone still happily running IE6 to install Chrome Frame?

When forced to deal with frontend stuff, I have wasted more hours of my life than I care to count at least trying to get basic rendering in IE6. While it probably won't get most people to change it, at least making them aware of the fact that their browser is ancient might wake SOME up.

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