use of outdated browsers, a question to the admins of forums

Hello

An article (in german language) about the payment of around 120.000EURO for further support of Windows-XP for the german government let me to think about the support [edit]of this piece of software[/edit] for outdated browsers.

Some HTML-construction in the forum software is only necessary to give old browsers access to some form of CSS-formatting. For newer browsers wich supports CSS-3-features the HTML and the CSS could be some bits simpler at many places.

I know that some installations have many visitors with old browsers (e.g. because of their companies environment). On the other hand, the support of Windows-XP ended on april the 9th 2014. Is this an issue nowadays? Or should we leave the old crap behind us?

Tschö, Auge

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Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

Hi Auge,

An article (in german language) …

Amazing reading matter!

Some HTML-construction in the forum software is only necessary to give old browsers access to some form of CSS-formatting. For newer browsers wich supports CSS-3-features the HTML and the CSS could be some bits simpler at many places.

As long as the functionality is not affected – which IMHO shouldn’t be the case – I don’t see a good reason to keep the old stuff.

I know that some installations have many visitors with old browsers (e.g. because of their companies environment).

Yep. I see XP still at many places. Last one: The Airport of Amman/Jordan.

On the other hand, the support of Windows-XP ended on april the 9th 2014. Is this an issue nowadays?

Actually it is beyond my intellectual reach why some IT-gurus (you know: beard, sneakers, lumberjack shirt) resist in leaving a vulnerable OS behind. There is one exception: “Homebrew”-software which will be very expensive to migrate. In this case it would mean not only an investment in hardware running e.g. Win7+. The alternative of staying with old in-house software is nasty. I would not love to roll-out virtual PCs / Windows XP Mode for thousand of clients in a company.

Or should we leave the old crap behind us?

Yes. The question arises about how far can / should one go? I think that full-fledged HTML5/CSS3 would be too much.
Maybe we should start a survey amongst admins – having an eye especially on IE.
As you know my forum is not representative since many users come form developing countries. My current IE-stats:
6 (1.4%), 7 (5.5%), 8 (8.4%), 9 (4.6%), 10 (2.2%), 11 (0.011%). Seems that Win8.1 is not too popular yet. I had just 1.1% requests from mobile devices.

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Cheers,
Alfie (Helmut Schütz)
BEBA-Forum (v1.8β)

Hello Alfie

Thank you for your data input.

Some HTML-construction in the forum software is only necessary to give old browsers access to some form of CSS-formatting. For newer browsers wich supports CSS-3-features the HTML and the CSS could be some bits simpler at many places.

As long as the functionality is not affected – which IMHO shouldn’t be the case – I don’t see a good reason to keep the old stuff.

FACK

Actually it is beyond my intellectual reach why some IT-gurus (you know: beard, sneakers, lumberjack shirt) resist in leaving a vulnerable OS behind.

We (in my company) need (virtual) XP-installations too. There is the database wich is not fully migrated to the SQL-Server and a special software to read collected data from measurement instruments that is not running on a newer Windows-version than XP.

We cound have iOS apps and other "crap" but not a new version that runs on a newer Windows. Unfortunately we are dependant to this program. :angry:

Or should we leave the old crap behind us?

Yes. The question arises about how far can / should one go? I think that full-fledged HTML5/CSS3 would be too much.
Maybe we should start a survey amongst admins – having an eye especially on IE.

We could abandon the classes for stripe coloured table rows. We could abandon the colour gradient graphics. We should consider the use of HTML5 instead XHTML1. With CSS and JS (HTML5-shiv) older browsers can use the unknown elements. We could use wide supported HTML5 form field types (Fallback is type "text"). ...

We should debate about the necesssarity of changes of the UI. There are a great many number of devices with smaller viewport than desktops browsers outside. Users have to touch the links to reach the next site. These are very small what causes a nightmare of zooming or a "Friemelei" [1].

As you know my forum is not representative since many users come form developing countries. My current IE-stats:
6 (1.4%), 7 (5.5%), 8 (8.4%), 9 (4.6%), 10 (2.2%), 11 (0.011%). Seems that Win8.1 is not too popular yet. I had just 1.1% requests from mobile devices.

Let's summarise:
- IE 6, 7 and 8: 15.3% (Windows XP)
- IE 9, 10 and 11: 6.811% (Windows Vista or newer)
- 22.111% with IE, the rest comes with Chrome, Firefox etc.

The latter mentioned browsers have auto-update-functions [2] and most of the installations should be somewhat up to date. Many of the CSS3-features are available with IE 9 or 10 and newer. If an user with an older IE can't see a gradient or table rows with different backgroud colours should not affect us. There are non-gradient background colours present for the site at all and possible for tables and other elements.

[1] Is there an adequate english word? Neither dict.leo.org (my favourite translation tool) nor Google Translate know this term.
[2] Windows itself has auto-update (also for IE) too. But there are, as said, many intentional outdated installations in companies.

Tschö, Auge

--
Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

Hi Auge,

We (in my company) need (virtual) XP-installations too. […] We cound have iOS apps and other "crap" but not a new version that runs on a newer Windows. Unfortunately we are dependant to this program.

Sounds familiar. :-D

BTW, I love open-source software. We recently published two papers comparing different software packages used in the evaluation of clinical studies (doi 10.1208/s12248-014-9661-0, doi 10.1208/s12248-014-9704-6). It turned that the results of a particular type of study (in ~30–40% of cases) obtained in one of the commercial (!) software packages were simply wrong. [image] The bug was known to the company before 2000 (!), a corrective patch ready, but the management didn’t consider it “top priority” – it was never rolled out. Now thousands of studies worldwide are recalculated.
The open-source software (R) worked perfectly.

We could abandon the classes for stripe coloured table rows. We could abandon the colour gradient graphics. We should consider the use of HTML5 instead XHTML1. With CSS and JS (HTML5-shiv) older browsers can use the unknown elements. We could use wide supported HTML5 form field types (Fallback is type "text"). ...

Agree.

There are a great many number of devices with smaller viewport than desktops browsers outside. Users have to touch the links to reach the next site. These are very small what causes a nightmare of zooming or a "Friemelei" [1].

Absolutely. In order to deal with this issue HTML5 is the only reasonable way to go. My personal translation for [1]: “fumbling around” (I use this phrase regularly).

Let's summarise:
- IE 6, 7 and 8: 15.3% (Windows XP)
- IE 9, 10 and 11: 6.811% (Windows Vista or newer)
- 22.111% with IE, the rest comes with Chrome, Firefox etc.

The latter mentioned browsers have auto-update-functions [2] and most of the installations should be somewhat up to date. Many of the CSS3-features are available with IE 9 or 10 and newer. If an user with an older IE can't see a gradient or table rows with different backgroud colours should not affect us. There are non-gradient background colours present for the site at all and possible for tables and other elements.

Agree again.

--
Cheers,
Alfie (Helmut Schütz)
BEBA-Forum (v1.8β)

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