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Playing with Curve2

Started by Antes, May 05, 2014, 04:59:13 PM

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Tony Reid

Well, the fact is that IE8 is no longer supported by Microsoft. Given that it only just got through the zero day fix at the last patch tuesday - should SMF still be held back by IE8's crippled technology?

People that are still using it really need to understand the security implications, and be encouraged to upgrade to an alternative browser.

I know its not SMF's place to be a moral compass(I hate that term!), but if websites still let users get away with using it - then it can only be bad in general for the internet. And no - I am not suggesting that we go back to the early 90's with badges on the sites suggesting better experiences on other browsers!. Just that we should support our users in improving their experience of our websites.

I don't like to state things without fact, so looking at the analytics on my website, I can see that IE 8,9 and 10 usage is around the same - however since april I have seen a massive drop in IE 8 sessions - from 2700 unique IE8 sessions to 1020 IE8 Sessions a day. Interestingly - Safari has risen, so perhaps more people have moved from XP to ipad etc - which is perhaps another reason SMF should have more responsive/mobile themes.

Think I am wandering off topic now - so I'll stop :)


Tony Reid

Tony Reid

Quote from: Hristo on May 14, 2014, 01:18:40 PM
Not that my vote counts much but still, I'm fully for dropping IE8 support from 2.1. As of April it has 4-5% usage, compared to ~8% usage year ago. Considering as of April XP is no longer supported I expect significant drop in usage within next few months. And when 2.1 is released IE8 will have less than 2% share.

Everyones vote counts here :)

Looks like you summed up what I was thinking with a lot less words :)
Tony Reid

Antes

Quote from: Tony Reid on May 14, 2014, 01:43:11 PM
Quote from: Hristo on May 14, 2014, 01:18:40 PM
Not that my vote counts much but still, I'm fully for dropping IE8 support from 2.1. As of April it has 4-5% usage, compared to ~8% usage year ago. Considering as of April XP is no longer supported I expect significant drop in usage within next few months. And when 2.1 is released IE8 will have less than 2% share.

Everyones vote counts here :)

Looks like you summed up what I was thinking with a lot less words :)

+1

Arantor

By that same logic, the minimum requirement of SMF 2.1 should also be updated to PHP 5.3.28 because that's the lowest supported version - and yet there are still hosts on PHP 5.2 even though it's unsupported.

Tony Reid

Quote from: Arantor on May 14, 2014, 02:10:10 PM
By that same logic, the minimum requirement of SMF 2.1 should also be updated to PHP 5.3.28 because that's the lowest supported version - and yet there are still hosts on PHP 5.2 even though it's unsupported.

Well, people will not upgrade unless they need to, which from a dev perspective means supporting old tech, old coding methods and isn't that great for an open source project where developers need moral and can't go off and do some modern coding! (sound familiar?) - so why not aim to support PHP 5.3? Performance is surely better?

Shared hosts will upgrade for security reasons - they just need a nudge.
Tony Reid

Arantor

And every single argument made for upgrading to PHP 5.3 applies to IE 8 support.

Kindred

Quite so, Arantor,
we recently discussed it and decided that 5.3 WAS a reasonable minimum requirement
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Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Deaks

Tony, IE8 still contributes to roughly 21% of the internet browser market (depending on what site you use for analysis) this is a large share so do you really think its good idea to ignore??

(data comes from http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2&qpcustomd=0)
~~~~
Former SMF Project Manager
Former SMF Customizer

"For as lang as hunner o us is in life, in nae wey
will we thole the Soothron tae owergang us. In truth it isna for glory, or wealth, or
honours that we fecht, but for freedom alane, that nae honest cheil gies up but wi life
itsel."

Hristo

For some reason NetMarketShare's (aka NetApplications) browsers market share data is always complete opposite to all other public analytics companies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table

I do not know why! Maybe most of the 40 000 sites they gather data from are Chinese (where IE8 is still very used), but, sorry, I can't believe IE8 is the most widely used browser.

Arantor

Maybe wherever they get their stats from includes large sites that are heavily hit by corporate users where there will be a large amount of legacy systems not able to be upgraded for whatever reason.

See, XP's death knell hasn't actually caused major drops in XP's market coverage. It's decreased, but it hasn't died overnight like everyone in the tech industry hoped it would. That's kind of the problem, really, there's still millions of desktops on XP (including the US' IRS and the UK's NHS which each have support contracts with Microsoft for their machines; I forget how many the IRS have but I know the NHS is supporting the migration of over a MILLION XP machines, I don't know how many net facing ones are in that, though)

Tony Reid

Quote from: Μπράιαν Poύνικ Ντίκεν on May 14, 2014, 07:36:43 PM
Tony, IE8 still contributes to roughly 21% of the internet browser market (depending on what site you use for analysis) this is a large share so do you really think its good idea to ignore??

(data comes from http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2&qpcustomd=0)

Like Arantor said...

Quote from: Arantor on May 14, 2014, 09:16:26 PM
Maybe wherever they get their stats from includes large sites that are heavily hit by corporate users where there will be a large amount of legacy systems not able to be upgraded for whatever reason.

There certainly are large numbers of XP machines, Win2000/2003 out there - including our banking ATM machines (embedded XP).

The thing is, looking at data like this and making statistical judgements is meaningless without context.

On my site IE8 is around 2% of users, on SMF and other tech sites it could be different, on gossip/news paper site again different.

I have to get ready for work - but yes Bryan I do think IE8 should be a low priority. If a site owner really wants to support IE8 then they could look at having a low tech theme. But SMF shouldn't be held back.
Tony Reid

Deaks

Tony every site is different and you are right we cant use web site traffic as a comparison, but think back to a few years ago and how long IE6 was still supported.  Ok maybe if 3.0 ever gets made then drop up to ie10 but point is you want to be inclusive and as been pointed out their are ways to do that even for IE8 ... enjoy work I am finished Uni till September so party time :P
~~~~
Former SMF Project Manager
Former SMF Customizer

"For as lang as hunner o us is in life, in nae wey
will we thole the Soothron tae owergang us. In truth it isna for glory, or wealth, or
honours that we fecht, but for freedom alane, that nae honest cheil gies up but wi life
itsel."

Tony Reid

Yeah - we can always stick a shim in to get more advanced themes working, but SMF should not be dependent on browser.

The main issue for me with IE8 is that its a security risk - now that MS are not going to look after it.




Work is awful - its bright and sunny outside - and I'm stuck inside coding :(
Tony Reid

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