Is incompatibility with IE6 going to be fixed?

Good to see you here Geek!


As for me it is simple. If I use software that does not look and work well I will loose customers/$ to the competition. That includes IE6 support.

My competition made some changes similar to v3->v4, and we had a large increase in traffic.

 

I just find it ironic that at one time vB was touted as being a product ideal for corporate users and now we found ourselves in a situation where the current version will have it's biggest negative impact on.... corporate users.

With the latest price increases & license changes IB seems to be wanting to drive out the 'little guy' owners while the actual usability of vB4 makes it seem like IB is less concerned about corporate usage and more about catering to the whims of that demographic of the IT world that thinks everybody should be using what ever browser is the flavor-of-the-day.

 

I always did like IE6 compared to newer MS Browsers like IE7 and 8. While I agree that IE6 is well outdated now and doesn't even support PNG display. And many more modern sites "Do" look a mess in it. Plus MS have already said they are no longer supporting it. It is a better browser (garbage wise) than MS 7 and 8. I personally liked using IE6, wish I could say the same for IE8. Which I can't and use FireFox all the time now because I did choose to update my browser from MS 6 to 8.

So I really can see why so many people still refuse to jump too IE8 from IE6. Or do and go back again to IE6. Most likely only using sites out there that still look OK in it. Which to be honest most still do.

 

Thank you, Paul! I am happy to hear that it is usable and getting fixed.

I don't care whether IE6 is outdated or not, my only concern is that I don't loose 11% of my visitors.

 

I think gnaster hit the nail on the head. Employers don't care if the browser used on the corporate network works with YouTube, Facebook, etc as most employers don't want their employees on these sites anyhow. I most employers would want their employees surfing forums either.

As for home users that use IE6, I see no logical reason that they cannot install Firefox or even Chrome which is pretty lightweight. Any of my friends computers that I maintain get educated that Firefox for the most part vastly better than IE and more secure to boot.

That being said I don't think it should be vBulletin's decision to decide for you the webmaster that your end users cannot functionally surf your site with IE 6 since it still has a nice chunk of market share.

 

Oh, you mean like E85?

 

Its still as amusing as ever to see the unreal "tell them to upgrade" brigade.

It doesnt matter how old IE6 is, or why people use it, and it certainly doesnt matter whether you like it or not - the plain and simple fact is that people are still using it. At least 11% of them, and in many parts of the world that figure is much higher. If you can afford to alienate those members, fine, go for it, more potential members for the rest of us.

 

I don't know anyone who's saying they MUST upgrade. I do however, see people saying if they want extended functionality then upgrading is something they should do. Like I said before, facebook, youtube, 37signals, and more are on this "brigade" you keep referring to.

3.8% of my all of my sites visitors are on IE6. My sites work fine in IE6 but I plan on not worrying as much about it too far down the road because it does need to be phased out. With HTML 5 on the horizon, and CSS 3 support added by almost all new browsers (execpt a specific one named IE) moving forward doesn't hurt anyone except the people who have pigeonholed themselves into a very old browser.

The Brads – a comic about web design The Brads – Browser Support

 

Are you saying those places are best visited with a browser newer than IE6?

Interesting. Especially the January 14th 2010 comment.

 

I know Facebook actively tells you to upgrade if you're running IE6, and will link you to Firefox or IE8.

 

Odd, I just connected to FB from the office using IE6 (6.0.2900 running on WinXP SP2 to be precise) and no warnings and everything looks good.

 

Well, they used too. I remember browsing it in IE6 at a friends house.

 

Yes that is what I'm saying, and they also gently push you in that direction. See these if you don't believe me:
http://www.kryogenix.org/days/2008/08/27/facebook-doesnt-really-support-ie6
37signals Product Blog: Phasing out support for IE 6 across all 37signals products on August 15, 2008
YouTube Will Be Next To Kiss IE6 Support Goodbye

need more...

That is an automated trackback to this thread... not sure how there is anything interesting about it.

 

Did you see that?

vBulletin 4.0.1 Maintenance Release Now Available! - Blogs - vBulletin Community Forum

Highlights of what’s fixed in 4.0.1:
• [Tab Ordering] Added Tab Index Ordering
• [Search] Added Search Results by Relevancy
• [IE6] Fixed: background images disappear in IE6
• [IE6] Fixed: Additional IE6 bug fixes.
• [IE6] Fixed IE6 issues in CMS home.
• [IE6] Post dates missing in IE6
• [IE6] Forum leaders page
• [IE6] Fixed CP CMS Section edit popup displays under other page elements in IE6.
• [IE8] Fixed post reputation in IE8
• [StyleVar] Fixed StyleVars
• [StyleVar] Added Stylevars for UserCP/Settings
• [Video] Fixed IE8 Bugs
• [Sidebar Blocks] Fixed Sidebar handling of long title names
• [Blogs] Lightbox doesn't work in Blogs including inline images
• [CMS] Fixed CMS Static HTML Widget
• [CMS] Fixed CMS PHP Direct Widget
• [CMS] Fixed CMS Category Bug
• [CMS] Widget Manager - When creating a new widget, widget type pull down should display in alphabetical order
• [CMS] Section Reset Ordering Bug
• [CMS] Please put CMS in /index.php and FORUMS in /forums/index.php
• [CMS] CMS Query Bug - Phase 1
• [Groups] Removed hardcoded phrases in Groups
• [Announcements] Fixed Announcement display problem
• [Smilies] Fixed Smilie Path - Forced to use relative path
• [CSS] user defined Additional CSS to pages
• [CSS] Store CSS as files does not work
• [Sitemap] Sitemap not being Recognized by Google (only Forums)
• [RTL] Problem in What's New Page when change Language R2L
• [RTL] editor icons problem
• [RTL] The new forum home sidebar does not move to the left when viewing the site in a RTL language.
• [RTL] Groups issues
• [RTL] Fixed RTL and IE7
• [Style Manager] Unchecking style in Style Manager causes style issues
• ...and about 200 more bugs

 

That will be one large impetus to get my users off of IE6, the article was from July 2009. Possibly another year of IE6 for us once youtube makes people go away from IE6.

I was surprised to see what was being typed in this thread show up somewhere else.

 

That's the bottom line, I agree. It makes no darn difference why over 10% of internet users use IE6. If they want to use IE6 and I want them on my forum, my forum has to be compatible with IE6.

Also those who are still on IE6 are likely to be the hardest to persuade/teach/encourage/outreach to change ... if they were change-friendly, they would have done it already.

Why is there something wrong with a product that works well after 8-10 years? That used to be a standard of quality. Our new culture of obsolescence, huh. (What I want is socks that last 8-10 years, if anyone knows where to get some. )

Yep, according to the published list repeated above by Ramya108, the just released 4.0.1 fixes the IE6 compatibility. But. Upgrade in test, not live !!! I just put up a test version in 4.0.1 and let's just say that right out of the box it is not ready for primetime. I'm sure I'll be happy with it once it's all sorted out.

 

While I see your point about the whole disposable society you're trying to make, IE really doesn't work great at all compared to current browsers. Its slower, bulkier, has problems with javascript, flash, html5, css2, xhtml, etc...

The thing is, people have catered to it for so long and made work-arounds just to get rid of the pain it causes users. There is a point in time when people need to stop supporting an old browser and people who are too stuck in their ways to sink or swim. Upgrade or lose compatibility with sites.

I use quite a few CSS3 properties that make my designs look better that IE6 users won't see. It won't hurt them in the usability of the site but eventually more and more people are going to need to move beyond IE6. HTML5 is right around the corner and within 1 year you're going to see huge companies and markets ignoring IE6 because its not worth the hassle.

I'm all for accessiblity so I won't limit my users. However, people saying how "dumb" it is to not code specifically for IE6 really don't seem to grasp the current evolution of the internet.

 

I question that they "catered to it," because those who haven't upgraded may well not even know how to cater to anything techie. They are using what they understand, that's all.

My point about "There is a point in time when people need to stop supporting an old browser and people who are too stuck in their ways to sink or swim" sorts of statements is that they are very left-brained in a world with with increasing numbers of right-brained users. The attitude is not customer-centric, it's me-centric. I don't mean that personally toward you, I mean that as a general comment. Encouraging the less-techie public to use one's offerings means meeting their needs, not demanding they meet ours. They need fewer demands for change ... and that won't change.

 

Thought I'd find an IE6 thread here somewhere LOL!

As you may have noticed, poor IE6 support in vB4 is one of the reasons I'm not using it, and I made clear why it was important not to shun those users.

Rather than me type it all out again, I'll just copy and paste a reply I made to someone who made these points:

• That they dropped IE6 support on their site as soon as IE8 hit gold.
• That they're not wasting their time for lazy people who don't upgrade to modern browsers.
• That most big sites do the same.

Here's my reply - but it applies to the wider debate too hence why I'm reposting it here:

Your speculation on IE6 users' purported 'laziness' is completely irrelevant to the decision of whether or not to support the browser.

This is a decision that should be guided by one thing: browser market share.

And by that, I mean browser market share for the individual forum websites powered by vB. Which is about as diverse a 'market' as you get.

Sure, some individual websites/forums out there today can probably afford to drop IE6, depending on their market. (Social networking sites with overwhelmingly young audiences for instance, MobileMe etc. Certain specialist sectors, and so on.)

But for most of us who target general audiences and don't wish to lose 15% or so of our visitors, that decision (at this point in time) is, IMO, a big mistake.

Ultimately, if providing an unpleasant and unusable experience for IE6 users hits conversion rates for our sites (as compared to the rates among other browsers) then quite simply the wrong decision has been made. That really is what it boils down to. Not whether you think the users are lazy. And certainly not whether you can be bothered spending time on it or not.

I've been part of a team developing sites - big and small - for the last 10 years. I've followed browser usage closely. (For one thing, it's in my interest to ensure that dev time isn't wasted unnecessarily on fixing things for a browser that hardly anyone uses.) I can tell you that, to date, I've yet to encounter a project where the stats suggested that IE6 users could be safely ignored.

It's certainly too early for the software developers themselves to assume that us forum owners can simply drop IE6 support.

Far more sensible to leave the IE6 decision up to the individual forum developer/skinner/admin than the developer of the forum software itself, don't you think?

Btw, I can tell you that you're presumptuous and in many cases, most likely wrong in what you say about IE6 laziness. Whether it's corporate workstations or old computers, IE6 usage doesn't always come down to laziness, frustrating as it is for those of us who might lose an afternoon or more on some piddly IE bug when everything works fine in more standards compliant browsers. I'd love nothing more than for all those users to upgrade (or be in a position to upgrade). But guess what? For as long as the percentage of IE6 users hovers between 10-20% (even above 5%), it should be our job as developers to cater for it. Not to use our frustration as a reason to wash our hands of the forum users.

Just to be clear, I'm not asking for 100% pixel-perfect websites in IE6. I'm fully aware of the loops developers have to jump through and the compromises that need to be made. I don't expect the same neat effects or exact same layouts. But it should be functional, legible and free of bugs. The current alpha release of vB is not. Icons overlap text preventing it from being read, thread titles disappear when the browser is resized, and so on.

I don't know about you but I don't want to alienate 1 in 5 or even 1 in 10 of my users. I doubt it's in IB's interest either. If the numbers are anything to go by, at this point in time, it's still unfeasible for a serious developer to shun IE6, however much they might like to.

 

:thumbup: Razasharp, you live up to your screenname.

I would add ... imo, "laziness" is not what's going on with the users who are not techies. It's what's going on with developers and forum-providers who are not willing to meet customers where the customer lives. Yes, it is work!! Work is what people do who earn livings from the internet. So grab a shovel.