Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 17, 2010, 12:29:50 pm
However, I couldn't find an official Google chrome or Safari button that are useable on external sites to promote those browsers, and I would like to include them without having to use a massive one and without getting in trouble for copyrighted content. If they ever make one I wonder if this could be an idea to convince IE users to switch? I would also ad a small text below the ads telling "Using another browser will allow you to browse Omnimaga with no ads!"
Post by: Eeems on April 17, 2010, 01:06:32 pm
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 17, 2010, 01:08:02 pm
Post by: Zera on April 17, 2010, 01:14:20 pm
Quote
"Using another browser will allow you to browse Omnimaga with no ads!"
I don't know if I would use this as a selling point. It's like you're coercing them to use another browser.
Is there a reason why you want your viewers to switch? I mean, if the site is incompatible with IE, or something, then mention that.(i.e, "Site is best viewed with Firefox or Opera," or "Some site features not compatible with IE - go upgrade!")
Post by: Eeems on April 17, 2010, 01:18:17 pm
hmm, I can't find any smaller versions...although crashie.com might have some..
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 17, 2010, 01:46:28 pm
yeah the issue is the site not being compatible with IE. At the bottom of page we got a warning saying "Best viewed in Opera, Firefox, Chrome and Safari with a resolution of 1024x768 or above." but I still get complaints about stuff not working well in IE. I just tell people to switch to Firefox/Opera because IE just plain sucks at rendering sites, but it,s annoying to have to tell them all x.x. Making this more visible would make it easier for people to know we have no plan to spend endless time and effort trying to make this site compabible in a browser that won't even pass the Acid3 test at 20% and fails at rendering some of the most rudimentary CSS.Quote"Using another browser will allow you to browse Omnimaga with no ads!"
I don't know if I would use this as a selling point. It's like you're coercing them to use another browser.
Is there a reason why you want your viewers to switch? I mean, if the site is incompatible with IE, or something, then mention that.(i.e, "Site is best viewed with Firefox or Opera," or "Some site features not compatible with IE - go upgrade!")
At least it's not bad like making IE users be redirected to another site when they open Omnimaga, that would be much more rude. With the ads, at least, they can still browse the site and use some of its features.
Post by: Eeems on April 17, 2010, 01:49:34 pm
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 17, 2010, 01:54:05 pm
Post by: Eeems on April 17, 2010, 01:58:15 pm
Post by: Galandros on April 17, 2010, 03:00:04 pm
Using them to solve the problem is something like:
<!--[if IE]>
<div class="IEclass">
<img scr="getfirefox.png" /><img scr="getopera.png" />
</div>
<![endif]-->
this will only be displayed in IE.
More things about this: http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/cc2.shtml
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537512%28VS.85%29.aspx
By the way, Chrome is also a nice one. The 3 are all good and I like some features in each of the 3.
I prefer to say to users to use the latest browser version. IE8 is quite decent if is in standards mode activated by a doctype, I think.
Post by: Zera on April 17, 2010, 03:12:54 pm
If IE is experiencing major, site-breaking incompatibilities, I would just go ahead and redirect to an "Go upgrade!" page. I know it seems kind of rude, but there may be no other solution than to use a different browser. Alternatively, you could include a link that enables the user to view the site at their own discretion, bearing in mind that some elements might be broken.
Edit: LOL, someone actually voted my respect down because of that previous post. Did I offend IE users? :P
Post by: Netham45 on April 17, 2010, 03:14:47 pm
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 17, 2010, 03:16:55 pm
Post by: Galandros on April 17, 2010, 03:29:57 pm
The main issue is that OmnomIRC fails in IE, I believe.Is the problem in the AJAX? For IE the object for AJAX is another one, but that seems too simple for not fixing already...
Maybe if you use some JS library that works across browsers. (I don't like libraries because I prefer writing my own lib)
Post by: Silver Shadow on April 17, 2010, 03:31:46 pm
I'm OK with having ads, but not with a page redirection which is pretty rude.
EDIT: and also, I don't like much the idea of forcing people to change browser just to not see the ads anymore. People should use browsers because they want to, not because they are forced to do so. And also, why such hatred against IE? I've always used it and it works fine.
Post by: Zera on April 17, 2010, 03:45:58 pm
Yeah. Oh well I'll just do what I want I guess cuz I don't see why Zera would have such an issue with ads showing up for IE users unless he's a IE fanboy.
Not sure how you got that impression, considering I just slammed IE in my most recent post. I've been an avid Opera fanboy going on 2+ years now.
Like Silver Shadow said, I just don't think it's fair to coerce users into switching their browsers. I mean, I'm sure a lot of people do use IE just because it's included with Windows; but I don't think they should necessarily be punished for it. I'm sure some people also prefer it for their own reasons. Just let people know that the site is not fully compatible with IE and let them make the decision for themselves. If they still complain about incompatibilities, then point them to the notice.
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 17, 2010, 04:26:57 pm
Omnimaga works in IE8 perfectly once you activate "compatibility" mode.I'm not hating on IE it's just a major PITA to get anything that works in all 4 other popular browsers to work fine in IE. In many cases, it's so bad that we need to double our code size with stuff that will only run if the browser is IE and another piece of code that will only run in others. Netham45 just had to spend almost an hour trying to get OmnomIRC to work under Internet Explorer 8 latest version. It's not his code that sucks, it followed web standards, it's IE that doesn't follow web standards completly (altough it got better. IE9 apparently pass the Acid3 test at 55% while IE8 only at 20). It's getting there but Microsoft still have a long way to go. I would like you Silver Shadow to put yourself at Netham45 place when it comes to fixing OmnomIRC to work in IE without breaking compatibility with every single other browsers due to a single change, and my place, when it comes to getting the forum to look right in IE without breaking other browsers.
I'm OK with having ads, but not with a page redirection which is pretty rude.
EDIT: and also, I don't like much the idea of forcing people to change browser just to not see the ads anymore. People should use browsers because they want to, not because they are forced to do so. And also, why such hatred against IE? I've always used it and it works fine.
I guess I'll just drop the ad idea. However, what could I do to make the notice in the copyright saying "Best viewed in Opera, Firefox, Chrome and Safari with a resolution of 1024x768 or above." clearer?
Post by: Silver Shadow on April 17, 2010, 04:52:02 pm
No, I think the ad idea is good. I think that having these 2 ads next to the "best viewed in..." message might help people disover and/or use other browsers.
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 17, 2010, 04:59:54 pm
One thing I could do is put them below the site copyright. often, to reply to a topic, people will scroll way down the page, so the copyright will be higher and more noticeable. First, to do this idea, though, I would prefer waiting until I get a 3rd and 4th buttons for Safari and Chrome too so it won't look like we have a bias against Chrome and Safari. I don't like Safari too much either because it seems to load pages slower (altough not as much as IE) but it renders my site pretty well it seems.
Post by: TravisE on April 23, 2010, 06:47:56 am
IE have the, somewhat stupid (although useful to fix its damn bugs) and probably proprietary, "conditional comments".
I think that's at least a lot better and more elegant than having to rely on IE-specific HTML/CSS parsing glitches, which is a hacky, fragile, and easily-broken way of handling the issues, though. If we ever move ticalc.org's HTML over to a more modern CSS/HTML setup we may have to end up using them to get it to work properly in all the IE browsers.
Normally, I feel that it's best to support all browsers equally whenever possible, but it's understandable that sometimes there are compromises that have to be made and it becomes too costly to support everything out there. If Omnimaga were a commercial business or something, it might make sense to support many versions of IE because that would avoid leaving out a significant number of customers, but obviously it isn't and, like ticalc.org, no one gets paid for the time and work they put into the site, let alone for supporting additional browsers. :P
I can sympathize with web developers when it comes to these compatibility issues. A little while after I was hired at ticalc.org, I (as an experiment) did a mock-up of the front page using external CSS and standards-compliant HTML which looked okay in Konqueror and Firefox. When another staff member tested the rendering of various versions of IE for me, it was clear that that will probably be the biggest challenge and possibly where a lot of the work will be spent if we ever tackle this project. And this was just straight HTML/CSS, without yet trying to implement any Javascript or dynamic-type stuff. But at least the conditional comments thing that even older versions of IE have will really help. (It's also unfortunate that the site wouldn't render as well in text-based browsers like Lynx as it does with the current table-based layout, even though they say you shouldn't use tables for laying out pages. However, it would at least be usable.)
Anyway, I think the best approach would be to go ahead and have the ad buttons somewhere on the page like DJ Omnimaga mentioned, maybe with a neutral message sort of like “Some parts of this site may not work properly in Internet Explorer. We recommend using [whatever]”. Having a redirection page or anything that might be considered intrusive would probably just invite complaints, but I don't think anyone being reasonable would have a problem with small ad buttons that don't get in the way.