Google to cancel support for IE7, Safari 3, and Firefox 3.5 in August

[Crono]

Computers in my lab were almost all on IE6 until 2 weeks ago, but I've installed and have been using Firefox 7.0/Nightly since it's a lot faster and more secure. I think they only upgraded here to IE7 because some computers were infected with a virus.

 

[Ronstang]

IE has over 90% of the browser market in China. Seems like many are slow to upgrade XP era machines over there.

That is only because it has become much harder to steal MS operating systems since the introduction of Vista.

 

[Alone]

That is only because it has become much harder to steal MS operating systems since the introduction of Vista.

Sorely mistaken.

 

[gevorg]

More like they have shitty computers that don't support Vista/7 or just don't bother upgrading.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13639875



Also, 34% of people on IE6 in China . . . seriously?

Isn't IE6 the last version of Internet Explorer you can have on pirated Windows?

 

[Schadenfroh]

That is only because it has become much harder to steal MS operating systems since the introduction of Vista.

More like their hardware cannot handle any new(er) OS.

 

[xSauronx]

Boo ya, my work is still stick on IE6 cause they have so many in-house online programs. Glad they let us install firefox.

the hospital I work at it on ie7 as of late last year...there are still some machines that havent been upgraded from ie6, and powerscribe from nuance has issues with IE7 and those workstations have a policy in place to keep ie6 from being updated with everyone else

i installed chrome, fwiw, and more and more pcs i see there have firefox or chrome.

 

[sjwaste]

Microsoft spoiled the shit out of people with its practice of having each OS release being backwards compatible with every other OS they've released that you can remember. To maybe even a greater degree, the x86 architecture is the same with legacy support.

You can't have it both ways without some serious bloat and diminishing returns on resource expenditure. I'm fine with what Google is doing. I'd rather them not spend time/money testing for older platforms if it means the new release comes faster. It's not like an XP machine from 5 years ago can't run a browser that supports all of this.

 

[MotF Bane]

Sorely mistaken.

I think he's right. Harder to do it, as XP was laughably easy. It's still not impossible of course.

 

[waggy]

Yeah you can change it to be exactly like 3.6...

ohh you can? doh i hate how firefox 4 looks.

 

[bruceb]

Use this one ( I have it, works great)

Firefox 3 theme for Firefox 4+ 1.3.2

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-3-theme-for-firefox/

 

[Anubis]

im pretty sure the people complaining about how FF4 looks are not bitching about icon color, they dislike how they rearranged everything to look like chrome

 

[JujuFish]

I want my damn status bar back. I don't mind the other stuff.

 

[TridenT]

im pretty sure the people complaining about how FF4 looks are not bitching about icon color, they dislike how they rearranged everything to look like chrome

This. Chrome was cool when it first came out with that interface, but I don't dig it at all now.

If I can turn it EXACTLY into how FF 3.6 looks then I'll be fine with it...

 

[Zstream]

I want my damn status bar back. I don't mind the other stuff.

Amen!

 

[xanis]

As a web developer / programmer, I applaud them. You guys have no idea how utterly annoying it is to code a website with several goals and technological advances in mind, only to find out that some part of it doesn't work in IE 7, or FF 2, or something like that, and that browser still represents a decent chunk of the market.

It wouldn't be a big deal if it was only minor stuff, but I've had numerous cases where all browsers worked fine, except for IE 6 or IE 7, which parses CSS or Javascript differently from everyone else. That isn't to say that IE is the only offender, but it's generally the most problematic in my experiences.

After a period of going out of our minds trying to please everyone (compatibility vs. features), we officially dropped support for IE 6 and FF 1 about a year or two ago, and adopted an "update your browser for crying out loud" stance. I'm thinking we'll probably follow suit with IE 7 and FF 2 by the end of the year.

Amen. I've worked on a couple of projects where everything looks fine in Safari/Firefox/Chrome and looks like complete ass in IE. It's extremely annoying to have to code for the shitty, outdated versions of IE.

 

[zerocool84]

Amen. I've worked on a couple of projects where everything looks fine in Safari/Firefox/Chrome and looks like complete ass in IE. It's extremely annoying to have to code for the shitty, outdated versions of IE.

I do QA and I know exactly what you're talking about.

 

[coldmeat]

I'm still using 3.5. I didn't even know there was a 3.6

 

[bruceb]

For those that want the old Firefox status bar, this is said to be the best add on to do it.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/status-4-evar/

Also, the link I provided above, is about as close to the old Firefox 3 look as you can get. I am pleased with it.

 

[Locut0s]

Good. If more companies did this the internet wouldn't be the messy mish mash of old standards and non compliant sites that it is. Though this is getting much better.

 

[Dumac]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+to+make+firefox+4+look+like+3.6

For those who kept asking...

 

[Duder1no]

Whats the big deal??

exactly

haters gonna hate

 

[irishScott]

People who bitch about this are like the geezers who bitch when they get pulled over for driving a Model T on the highway.

 

[Ape]

Whats the big deal??

There isn't one IMO. Dropping support for old, less secure web browsers is a no brainer for any company.

 

[Balt]

Won't be an issue for my home PC. I have no idea what version of IE my work PC is using, though.