I'm starting a new project with foundation and the scope demands limited support for older browsers (including ie7 - 9). As I'll be working with Zurb's Foundation 4 Framework and they don't (fully) support IE 8 and below I'm currently looking for a list of Foundation 4 Features that don't work in those older browsers.
I know that the media queries are a problem but I think I can fix that easily and I'm currently not looking for specific fixes and polyfills but a list of not or only partly supported features (both css and js).
Thanks a lot!
You can take a look at the docs or look at the "kitchen sink" in your respective browser. I believe ie8 might be stuck with the mobile grid which may or may not be a good thing for your use case. If you want better backwards compatibility with ie, I suggest using foundation 3, unless there is a specific feature you must have that is f4 specific.
If you don't mind upgrading to Foundation 5, you can try some polyfills:
http://foundation.zurb.com/forum/posts/241-foundation-5-and-ie8
Related
I am supporting a web based application in an enterprise. I currently require Chrome, which the enterprise supports through using the Chrome Legacy Browser Support plugin to force an automatic switch. Now that they have updated their Windows 7 machines to Internet Explorer 11, some users are asking that the application be allowed to run on Internet Explorer 11.
For now, the JavaScript frameworks I use (along with Babel) are compatible with IE11, but what happens in the years to come?
I've seen no mention from Microsoft that says anything is coming after IE 11. In fact they say that nothing will come to Windows 7. With JavaScript now being updated each year (ES2015, ES2016, ES2017, etc.), how
does Microsoft plan to keep IE 11 up to date?
Will we be forced to support an increasingly "crufty" IE11? Will we be stuck with Internet Explorer 11 in enterprises till 2020 (the end of the Windows 7 lifecycle)?
With JavaScript now being updated each year (ES2015, ES2016, ES2017, etc.), how does Microsoft plan to keep IE 11 up to date?
They're not going to. As of 2015, Internet Explorer 11 will no longer be receiving any new features or platform bug fixes. Only security updates will be provided to IE11 from here on out. Going forward, Microsoft Edge is the new browser and Windows 10 is the new platform.
See the FAQ for more details.
Will we be forced to support an increasingly "crufty" IE11? Will we be stuck with Internet Explorer 11 in enterprises till 2020 (the end of the Windows 7 lifecycle)?
If a significant portion of your userbase consists of Windows 7 and 8.1 users, then you'll probably have to continue supporting IE11 if your users aren't using other browsers.
Having said that, IE11 isn't going to get any more "crufty" than it already is. It's going to continue falling behind as technology marches on, but with IE, what you see is what you get. You can pretty much rely on platform bugs and missing features remaining as they are and develop workarounds for them as appropriate. The behavior of IE11 isn't going to change in the foreseeable future, which also means that legacy sites that work with it today will continue to work provided they remain unchanged (e.g. won't be updated with new technologies). So there's a silver lining for you.
IE has a handy debug feature that lets you emulate older versions of IE (7-10). Is there a similar feature as an addon for Firefox/Chrome that lets you, for example, turn back Chrome to only have the features it had a few versions ago? Or in Firefox test a site without the latest Firefox versions' CSS features? Or roughly show what a site would look like in IE7 by removing border-radius, shadows and advanced CSS effects, while not actually changing the stylesheets as loaded in the browser?
It seems effectively possible to remove JS features just on one page - for example, window.ArrayBuffer = undefined would cause lack of ArrayBuffer functionality as would happen in older browsers - but is there any addon, or api to write an addon, to go a step beyond "User agent switch" and remove features for testing?
Is there a similar feature as an addon for Firefox/Chrome that lets you, for example, turn back Chrome to only have the features it had a few versions ago?
Use a feature called profiles to install and run multiple versions of the browser in parallel:
Mozillazine: Using Multiple Profiles
Chromium: Creating and Using Profiles
Opera: How to make multiple profiles?
These are more future-proof than the Microsoft solution:
Note You may be able to use legacy document modes to emulate the behavior of earlier versions. Should you choose to do this, be aware that this is a temporary solution at best. Starting with Internet Explorer 11 Preview, document modes are consider deprecated and may not be supported in any future versions of the browser. For best results, you should update your sites and apps to use features and techniques supported by industry standards and multiple browsers.
Note Starting with IE11, document modes are considered deprecated and should no longer be used. Webpages that require legacy document modes to display properly should be rewritten to use features defined by modern standards. To learn more, see Compatibility changes in IE11.
But have caveats:
Chrome profiles are not backwards compatible, so storing the user profile on a network drive and using it with different versions of Chrome can cause crashes and data loss.
References
Compatibility changes in IE11
IE10 Compatibility Changes
Specifying legacy document modes
When to use Legacy Document Modes
Understanding the need for document compatibility modes
HTML5 Parsing in IE10
IE 10 Compat Inspector
IE 10, HTML5 and jQuery 2.x - JavaScript runtime error: 'JSON' is undefined
Interoperable HTML Parsing in IE9
Compatibility View and 'Smart Defaults'
Chromium: Supported Directory Variables
There's one feature in my web application which requires a small browser plug-in to work. 99% of the application is ASP.NET + javascript and we have no skills in writing browser plug-ins or any interest in training someone to maintain it so I've used freelancer web sites with great success to get a working firefox plug-in/add-on/extension.
However, the new Firefox rapid release schedule is throwing this whole plan into disarray because every new version of firefox seems to need a new extension. This is not just to do with the em:maxVersion versions in the RDF file; the plugin actually refuses to load, so it seems that every 6 weeks I will have to commission a freelancer to update the plug-in for the next version of Firefox. From my limited understanding this is because each version of gecko is not compatible with the previous one.
I can't help but think I'm missing something here. For instance, the IE plugin was written in about 2005 for IE6 and we have never needed to touch it; it still works with IE9. Is it really the case that all firefox plug-ins have to be rewritten every 6 weeks, or am I doing something wrong?
The basic function of the plug-in is to use a windows timer to poll shared memory and then traverse the DOM to find a page with a specific javascript function which it then calls.
So my question is, is there any way that I can make a firefox plug-in with a more reasonable lifespan (i.e. year or more), or am I stuck with having to release a new one every time a new version of firefox comes out?
The best way to avoid compatibility issues with Firefox addons when using binary code ( c / c++ ) is to use JSCtypes. Here is a recent overview of how this works:
http://blog.mozilla.com/dwitte/2010/03/12/extension-authors-browser-hackers-meet-js-ctypes/
Here is an entry point to the MDN documentation on JSCtypes:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/js-ctypes
To avoid this long-term problem with compatibility, I would make a port of your C++ code to jsctypes from xpcom a hard requirement for the contractors you are working with.
I've just started creating my first firefox add-on and I'm currently in the learning stage, to familiarize with the api.
However I found a little ambiguous what method should I use. After I've read a few tutorials about how to build firefox add-ons using XUL, I realize there's another way:using add-ons sdk which from what I understand is only for firefox 4+ versions only.
I like better the sdk way compared with XUL, however to me the sdk looks like is still in early stage and lacks a few features(I think).
So my question is what road should I take? The new sdk way, which also looks a lot more cleaner than XUL, or to use the good old fashioned way:XUL(of which I'm not a big fan)?
After reading this post: http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2010/12/09/announcing-add-on-sdk-1-0b1/ I think that the sdk is much better than XUL, however because it lacks a few features like sockets api , I can start my project only using XUL, or postpone it until the sdk will become more mature.
Waiting your thoughts about this problem. Thanks
PS: I'm not interested in developing add-ons for older firefox version(ff3.x)
Add-on SDK is perfect for simple add-ons. Also, it does have access to XPCOM if you need advanced features. So the main issue is UI integration - the options are very limited and nothing comparable to XUL overlays exists.
Background Info
I'm currently searching around for ways to add support for older versions of Internet Explorer for an existing project that uses Protovis (and therefore the tag). My searching around has led me to two main places:
http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/protovis-internet-explorer/
Touches on the Chrome Frame plugin as well as SVGweb
https://gitorious.org/protovis/jloves-protovis
Seems to be an integration of Protovis with SVGweb
So far, I've downloaded the examples from each of these and opened them up in IE8 and have had no success whatsoever. The exact version of the IE is 8.0.7600.16385 and is running on a 64 bit Windows 7 Machine, and for the sake of SVGweb, the Flash version installed is 10.2.152.
The question(s)
Since I've had no luck making any of these work, I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong. Can anyone verify that the examples found in http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/media/upload/tutorials/protovis/protovis-ie.zip and/or https://gitorious.org/~jlove/protovis/jloves-protovis/commits/master work in IE8? If not, is there any other way (preferrably server side, but if there is a plugin that users can download and install for IE8 that would be okay too) to make protovis work on older IE versions?
Thank you for any help or advice!
I never had any luck with either of those solutions either. However, datamarket.com have recently come up with a drop-in shim available from http://blog.datamarket.com/2011/06/22/protovis-support-internet-explorer-8/ which worked right out of the box for me. The only drawback is that interactive aspects of your visualisation may not work in IE using the shim - I had some drag-select functionality that I had to re-implement with sliders under IE.