Comment by forgotmypw17 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by forgotmypw17 | Hacker News Reader

I agree, and I bend over backwards to support every browser, including beloved classics like Netscape3, Mosaic, IE3, Opera3, Netscape4, Opera12, IE4, IE6, and current IE11. Not to mention text-based Lynx, Links, w3m, curl, and wget.

If there is one person out there still using one of these browsers, for whatever reason, I want them to still be able to access my site, rather than telling them to take a hike.

I think it's rude, ablist, exclusionist, arrogant, just plain bad to demand the user switch browsers just to access my resource, akin to telling a wheelchair user to take a hike, or making a road incompatible with a certain car.

I don't think that for low-interest pages with text and information, HTTPS has more disadvantages than advantages.

I think the Web has taken a turn for the worse, but it's not too late to turn it around and make it free and accessible again.

I'm committed to put in work and research to bring about this turnaround. Honestly speaking, it's not that hard once you start trying. It's just a matter of keeping your HTML simple and light, feature-checking all your JavaScript, making fallbacks for nojs, favoring older tags over newer, ignoring some bullshit standards, and a bit of tweaking here and there.

If a near-idiot like myself working alone can build a web-based forum software which does all this, then I find it hard to believe that a company like Google couldn't do it.

And, in fact, while tricking everyone else to drop HTTP support and ignore non-Chrome browsers, Google continues to offer at least rudimentary support for Search for just about every browser I mentioned above.

I agree that accessibility is important but I disagree with a larger point behind this sentiment.

Governments can and do exclude cars from roads all the time, if they dont meet safety standards for instance, or aren't suited to the type of road (try riding a golf cart on a highway).

Similarly, while I agree that a wealthy government with world class resources should absolutely support those in wheelchairs (SF BART and NYC MTA have little excuse to have constantly broken elevators and many stations without wheelchair support), I don't blame a city with extremely constrained resources in the developing world that can't service the majority, from prioritizing the majority.

Similarly, I don't demand that a complex web app (like, say Figma) needs to work on a late 90s Japanese flip phone, because doing that would be the wrong vehicle for that road; nor do I blame a resource-constrained, web-inexperienced startup founder, for focusing on their main constituency of able-bodied on modern browsers, if that's the composition of their userbase.

Besides rejecting web apps as being inappropriate altogether (and you're probably on the wrong side of history by dying on that hill), it's facetious to claim that supporting IE4 for a complex app is a simple task.

Personally perfect is the enemy of good. Agreed that well-funded corporations with traction and broad markets don't have much excuse, though.

You claim to agree that accessibility is important in the first sentence, but after that you say everything against that. Accessibility is not just about screenreaders. It is allowing ACCESS to anyone, whether they are vision impaired, hearing impaired, have a slow or older device, slow Internet connection, unable to process long chunks of text, or even unable to read very well.

Before I address the rest of your argument, please explain what makes it so difficult to make an app work in IE4.

You are the one who added the word "complex", I never claimed such a thing. I claimed a reasonably functional website, and I stand by my claim that making it work in IE4 is not that difficult.

IE3 is a different beast, but it's still possible. I find it worth supporting for its beautiful toolbar.

You're right, golf carts are not supported on highways, but I sometimes see them on major roads, and they do just fine as long as they stay out of the way. Also I see tractors and excavators occasionally scurry across short distances.

A Model T is grandfathered in and allowed, and so is a 1940s Buick. There is no reason to disallow them, and there is no reason to disallow IE6, for example, which still has a small install base, except developer incompetence, in my opinion.

I did not claim something like Figma should work in all browsers, but I do claim that something like a forum for basic chat should. You are moving the goal posts, and I don't appreciate it.

Nor do I recall rejecting web apps altogether, where did I ever say that? A web app is just a website with additional functionality, and can work well across many different browsers with progressive enhancement.

My point was to be a counterpoint to what you were saying, which is why I focused on the reasons why being a stickler for legacy browser support isn't a great policy either.

To me, it's meaningless to say something like "X is important." Important to whom, for what end, relative to what? Nothing is important in a vacuum, when there's limited resources you're always choosing between several "important" things.

Supporting old browsers is a tradeoff, not just for saving developer time, but also for the user. For instance, do you care about internationalization? A lot of browser internationalization APIs don't work or exist in old browsers. Sure, you can make them work by bloating the payload that you send to a user on an antiquated browser. So what's more important to your users - accessibility for an old browser, or accessibility for a spotty internet connection, or accessibility to people who speak different languages?

My point about web apps is that it's often impractical to support extremely old browsers because they often lack the APIs, the users, nor the OEM support that make web apps worthwhile.

I find it hard to believe that a company like Google couldn't do it.

That's because Google has an incentive not to. What I find more disappointing are the others who aren't Google and have somehow been brainwashed into following it.

Thank you kind sir. As an eLinks and PaleMoon user that is being constantly blocked from accessing Google Chrome exclusive content, you are making a difference.

Thank you very much from an epiphany, eww, links and palemoon user.

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