HostGator Web Pages viewed with IE6..

[regentronique]

Since yesterday, most of the URL links on the HostGator pages are offset to the left and the top when viewed on IE6. I noticed this when accessing the reseller page and reported i to the online chat tech and he wrote that he cannot send this himself to support...

My suggestion is that HostGator page devoppers take the time to test the CSS with IE7, IE6, Mozilla and a few other flavors of browsers before putting them online. If the image of HostGator is important, of course ...

[gwyneth]

Pages anywhere are going to look worse and worse in IE6 as a) people stop implementing the workarounds and hacks necessary to get some CSS to look OK in IE6; b) those workarounds and hacks stop being used by applications that generate dynamic pages because many of those workarounds and hacks automatically make pages non-compliant with W3 standards; and c) many of those workarounds and hacks have stopped being supported.

IE6 has always had dozens, if not hundreds, of issues with specific CSS properties. Microsoft strongarmed standards bodies to grudingly tolerate them and promised (fingers only partially crossed) to make IE7 more compliant.

Here's a handful of the several hundred bookmarks I've got about specific CSS problems as implemented by IE6:

Internet Explorer vs. the Standards, a primer on standards ...

Problems with IE6 .0 and stylesheets :-( - CSS

Crash IE6 with Only CSS - Sitening Blog - Nashville SEO (Search ...

#5916 ( Internet Explorer 6 css hacks cause validation warnings ...

IE 6 css problem - Codewalkers

IE6 CSS bug :: Adam Kalsey

Here are two especially noteworthy sources. First is a comment at the Western Civ website. That's a software company that not only makes a CSS editor, but probably knows as much as anybody in the world about how to make CSS work. And guess what? The company's own web site doesn't look right in IE6.

Problems fixing CSS in IE6 « Westciv Forums

And here's an almost random selection of gems from Microsoft's own IE architecture blog (last year, several of us here noted the way the author was sounding more and more fried, more and more assaulted):

IEBlog : Details on our CSS changes for IE7

IEBlog : Standards and CSS in IE

[regentronique]

There is two philosophies at stake here : Find excuses to do a think or find excuses to not do a thing.

The first one based on the importance of business good looking and proof of professionalism. The second based on lack of knowledge and/or lack of intention to do more work.

I rest my case.

Brent what is your position on this?

When i look at your webpages my feeling is that your webpages designer do not care about the people thinking that if your webpages looks like this on their browser, your professionalism in webhosting should be the same...

P.S. Tech support was advise of this 4 days ago, 3 days ago and here on the forum 2 days ago.

I put a disclaimer on my sites:
===============
This site is standards compliant. It has been designed using the standards established at http://www.w3.org/ and it is 100% compliant. All of the features and functions comply with established guidelines.

If the browser you are using is not standards compliant you may have trouble with some of the display properties or functionality of the advanced features. This usually happens with the non-standards compliant browsers provided by Microsoft.

Please visit http://firefox.com for more details, and a free standards compliant browser.
=====================


I have no sympathy for people using IE6. I will occasionally make modifications to support IE7. I got so tired of having to design my site three times every time I made I page, I gave up. If I lose some traffic because of it, I don't care.

The time I save not having to support a non-standard POS browser more than makes up for the little bit of lost traffic.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by regentronique

There is two philosophies at stake here : Find excuses to do a think or find excuses to not do a thing.

You don't understand. Microsoft is the party that found excuses not to make IE 6 conform to W3 standards.

All of the hacks and workarounds that had to be employed to make pages look okay in IE6 were, in effect, the excuses not to fix IE6.

Your demand that pages look all right in IE6 is like asking parking lots in NYC to accomodate horses and buggies.

Or that FM radio stations broadcast their programming in Morse code.

Or that DVDs be able to play Beta format.

A similar situation is coming up in the U.S. with digital/high def television. Within a couple of years people who are using TVs that are several decades old won't be able to use them. They've been supported for long after the alternative was introduced, and for years the problem of making them dual-compliant has held up full compliance.

But sometime soon, those of us with regular ol' TVs will discover we have fewer and fewer viewing options, if any.

Is it realistic for me to write to Les Moonves of CBS, demanding that his company continue to allow me to watch 60 Minutes until my yard sale TV finally gives up?

That's pretty much what you're asking here.

[regentronique]

You are absolutely wrong, i really do not care that much about the bad image that HostGator are giving themself, i wrote : "... If the image of HostGator is important, of course ...". Take the time to read well...

So if they dont care, as Mack wrote, about people using IE6.0 then it will be even better for webhosting companies who cares.

And i do not like people giving me, publicly, intentions i do not have!

For the rest of your absurds and grossly exagerated examples, they were not appropriate to this thread.

For those of you always believing you are bright and right, just read those recent statistics :

W3Schools Browser Statistics Month by Month :
2007 IE7 IE6 IE5 Fx Moz S O
July 20.1% 36.9% 1.5% 34.5% 1.4% 1.5% 1.9%
June 19.7% 37.3% 1.5% 34.0% 1.4% 1.5% 1.8%
May 19.2% 38.1% 1.6% 33.7% 1.3% 1.5% 1.7%
April 19.1% 38.4% 1.7% 32.9% 1.3% 1.5% 1.6%
March 18.0% 38.7% 2.0% 31.8% 1.3% 1.6% 1.6%
February 16.4% 39.8% 2.5% 31.2% 1.4% 1.7% 1.5%
January 13.3% 42.3% 3.0% 31.0% 1.5% 1.7% 1.5%

Other sources :
Month IE6 % IE7 % FF % Others %
Jan '07 36.7 15.1 25.7 21.5
Dec '06 41.3 11.8 24.8 21.0

February 2007 :
IE6 61%
IE7 21%
Firefox 11%
Safari 4%
Netscape 1%
Opera 0.5%
Other (Mozilla, Camino etc) 1.5%

June 2007 :
IE7 17%
IE6 50%
FF2.0 14,6%
FF1.5 9%
other 9,4%

Here are the projections they gave in january 2007 :
IE7 IE6 IE5 Fx Moz S O
December 2007 18.99% 33.24% 0.78% 36.27% 1.39% 0.91% 1.45%
November 18.08% 34.51% 0.99% 35.72% 1.45% 0.88% 1.46%
October 17.17% 35.78% 1.20% 35.17% 1.51% 0.86% 1.46%
September 16.25% 37.05% 1.41% 34.62% 1.57% 0.83% 1.46%
August 15.34% 38.31% 1.62% 34.07% 1.63% 0.80% 1.46%
July 14.43% 39.58% 1.83% 33.53% 1.69% 0.78% 1.47%
June 13.52% 40.85% 2.04% 32.98% 1.75% 0.75% 1.47%
May 12.61% 42.12% 2.25% 32.43% 1.81% 0.72% 1.47%
April 11.69% 43.38% 2.45% 31.88% 1.87% 0.70% 1.48%
March 10.78% 44.65% 2.66% 31.33% 1.93% 0.67% 1.48%
February 9.87% 45.92% 2.87% 30.78% 1.99% 0.64% 1.48%
January 2007 - Now 13.30% 42.30% 3.00% 31.00% 1.50% 1.70% 1.50%

Conclusion : For now the mostly used browser is still IE6.0

P.S. The subject of this thread was not a debate for replacing IE6 with IE7, but a problem viewing a commercial webpage.

P.P.S. I comprehend more and more the interventions of quietfin...

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by regentronique

P.S. The subject of this thread was not a debate for replacing IE6 with IE7, but a problem viewing a commercial webpage.

And my answer was about how commercial webpage designers have been approaching the IE6 viewing issue, not at all about which browser to use.

In the evolution of any kind of standards, accommodating pre-compliant users is an important issue; vinyl records were produced for almost 20 years after CD players came on the market.

BTW, browser usage percentages of people visiting potential hosting companies are probably somewhat to very different from web users in general.

If HG site visitors' browser usage is even slightly close to those general ones, then yes, you've got a point. But the chances are good they're not.

[regentronique]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

If HG site visitors' browser usage is even slightly close to those general ones, then yes, you've got a point. But the chances are good they're not.

To put the way quietfin does it :

And you base your assumptions on what?

I wont recommend a crystal ball or divination, it is not too scientific...

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

If HG site visitors' browser usage is even slightly close to those general ones, then yes, you've got a point. But the chances are good they're not.

Originally Posted by regentronique

To put the way quietfin does it :

And you base your assumptions on what?

If I were making an assumption, I wouldn't have used the phrase "chances are".

If you ran a poll of users of this forum, I'd bet almost any amount that the browser use percentages are different from general web statistics. But that, too, would probably show a different breakdown than visitors to HG's general pages.

That's because the content of this forum tends to be more technical than HG's general pages, which in turn tends to be more technical than the entire web universe used in the studies you site.

The type of content on a website has such a strong influence on its visitors' browser usage statistics that whether it is for a technical audience is factored into most informal studies and virtually all expensive, expert studies.

You don't have to believe me, and I won't bore anybody with some of the statistics and survey methodology that actually stuck from my demographics graduate classes. But without controlling for type of website content, browser use stats can be very misleading.

Just take a quick glance at some of these:

All Things Web: Debunking Browser Stats

Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites | Developer's Toolbox

Tech Center Current » Blog Archive » Net Applications reports browser usage figures

Opera popularity

Mindful Musings » Browser War Survey

The Web Standards Project

[regentronique]

Why do you give URL of documents written in 2003 and 2004?

The most recent ones even confirm my informations.

And for the rest, they are completely irrelevant of the thread subject...

Finally, it is very easy to bet, when it is impossible to collect the loosers money... Be serious...

I suggest that if you are not happy with my suggestion to the HostGator web pages developper that you ask him/her directly to continue in his/her behavior...

Anyway, with these comments i can surely see how selfish and discriminatory you can be, concerning people not having the same browser you have. On the contrary, i have respect for even those still working on Windows 3.11 for Workgroups with the first rudimentary IE browser...

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by regentronique

And for the rest, they are completely irrelevant of the thread subject...

Anyway, with these comments i can surely see how selfish and discriminatory you can be, concerning people not having the same browser you have. On the contrary, i have respect for even those still working on Windows 3.11 for Workgroups with the first rudimentary IE browser...

I personally thought the thread subject was why HG's web pages might not look good viewed in IE6, instead of proving you right no matter what anybody else might say.

The links were not to provide alternate statistics, but only to show there tends to be a distinct difference between the browser usage of visitors to technical sites and non-technical sites. Thus, there's a good chance that HG's visitors do not conform to web-wide browser usage patterns, in which case citing them is irrelevant.

By your reasoning, any organization that ever called a halt to making current products backwards compatible is selfish and discriminatory.

I personally like Windows 98 much better than newer versions. But I accept the fact that less and less new software will work with it; that's the cost of choosing to use it.

Not once in this thread have I mentioned my own browser preferences, or reasons to use or not use any.

In fact, the issue isn't even whether sites are right or wrong to implement IE6 workarounds; it makes sense for some and it doesn't make sense for others.

If you don't realize why some sites choose not to, you are far too emotionally committed to the IE6 cause to discuss this logically.

[slapshotw]

Just to jump in here...I don't know that this discussion is do anything but get you two angry at each other. Once ad hominem arguments are used it's very hard to recover. This discussion also takes place every day on many other boards.

Maybe it's time to both relax a little?

[regentronique]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

I personally thought the thread subject was why HG's web pages might not look good viewed in IE6, instead of proving you right no matter what anybody else might say.

The links were not to provide alternate statistics, but only to show there tends to be a distinct difference between the browser usage of visitors to technical sites and non-technical sites. Thus, there's a good chance that HG's visitors do not conform to web-wide browser usage patterns, in which case citing them is irrelevant.

By your reasoning, any organization that ever called a halt to making current products backwards compatible is selfish and discriminatory.

I personally like Windows 98 much better than newer versions. But I accept the fact that less and less new software will work with it; that's the cost of choosing to use it.

Not once in this thread have I mentioned my own browser preferences, or reasons to use or not use any.

In fact, the issue isn't even whether sites are right or wrong to implement IE6 workarounds; it makes sense for some and it doesn't make sense for others.

If you don't realize why some sites choose not to, you are far too emotionally committed to the IE6 cause to discuss this logically.

1- I exactly know why the pages do not look right in IE6...
2- What kind of persons are looking to these pages is completely irrelevant here.
3- Businesses can change their software and needed platform whenever they want, it is their right, but it is still irrelevant here.
4- Everybody must understand that soon or later they will have difficulties to get new softwares for their platform, this is right, but again irrelevant here.
5- No need to know your browser, by the way you write about people using IE6...
6- As a teacher i know a lot more than you think and am not commited to IE6(this is another non sustainable assumption of your part, in fact i dislike Microsoft) but this is no reason to get in the way of people using IE6 by choice or by obligation.
7- Your narrow minded opinion can impair the access of the majority of people to websites, but you do not seem to care in your small bubble.
8- I wonder who is not logical or human here...

In conclusion i never asked if the members of the forum thought that HostGator should sustain the IE6 viewing of their website in this thread. I asked publicly HostGator themself if it was important to THEM! Learn how to read, this is not the first time you write without properly reading and understanding...

Finally Brent wrote me that he will check to have this fixed. Seem that he care more about those IE6 customers than you...

I hope i will never read your irrelevants FM/Morse codes and DVDs/Beta platitudes again. This is not a playground, grow up...

[nexia]

Originally Posted by regentronique

There is two philosophies at stake here : Find excuses to do a think or find excuses to not do a thing.

for that exact reason, i built a 100% moron proof website, with some guidelines.
http://eachparent.com/info/?show=colophon

the reason of your comment is simple... it's not your browser's fault, it is our fault... so be it... marry your browser, so then you will start saying it is its fault.

[regentronique]

Originally Posted by nexia

for that exact reason, i built a 100% moron proof website, with some guidelines.
http://eachparent.com/info/?show=colophon

the reason of your comment is simple... it's not your browser's fault, it is our fault... so be it... marry your browser, so then you will start saying it is its fault.

It is so easy to get to a wrong conclusion!

I wrote precedently : "in fact i dislike Microsoft".

So you should conclude that i know it is the browsers fault. But when creating a web page you have to decide if you care or not if it is displayed properly on the MAJORITY of webbrowsers in the world (if the world interest you for sure...). So this is why i keep a version of IE6(and many other browsers) for testing my webpages before releasing them.

But to use some colorfull comparaison like gwyneth, it is like americans saying that they wont change their way of behaving toward, neither they will help, people that do not live and think like them. So letting most of the people of the third world to starve to death. (quite like reality, when we think a bit about it...). People can be so self centered, that they believe it is the other that are...

Finally, the intent of this thread was to know the intention of HostGator regarding its commercial practice regarding non standard browsers. Seem that many have difficulties to comprehend that.

P.S. Brent confirmed that his intention were to make HostGator's pages IE6 compatible. Many corrections were made but some pages still have glitchess, but like he knows, it is quite difficult to find competent employees...

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by regentronique

So this is why i keep a version of IE6(and many other browsers) for testing my webpages before releasing them.

If you keep it only for testing your webpages why do you care how HG's pages look in it?

[gtgeorge]

Maybe he is looking for HG to offer him the position of web master

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by gtgeorge

Maybe he is looking for HG to offer him the position of web master

Thanks, George, I needed to laugh.

This thread gives me a headache. regentronique, you say "it is so easy to get to a wrong conclusion".

But you've changed the point you're apparently making several times. You've gone from citing statistics showing IR6 is the choice of a huge percentage of users to "the intent of this thread was to know the intention of HostGator regarding its commercial practice regarding non standard browsers."

So please stop blaming me and others for miscomprehending whatever it is you're trying to say.

I am not even going to look at this thread any more, I am not going to open or respond to your PM, and I would like to apologize to forum members for my part in creating any acrimony.

[regentronique]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

Thanks, George, I needed to laugh.

This thread gives me a headache. regentronique, you say "it is so easy to get to a wrong conclusion".

But you've changed the point you're apparently making several times. You've gone from citing statistics showing IR6 is the choice of a huge percentage of users to "the intent of this thread was to know the intention of HostGator regarding its commercial practice regarding non standard browsers."

So please stop blaming me and others for miscomprehending whatever it is you're trying to say.

I am not even going to look at this thread any more, I am not going to open or respond to your PM, and I would like to apologize to forum members for my part in creating any acrimony.

Yes, you are good at laughing...

I do not need any job, i have already two businesses to run...

If you cannot make the link between these to affirmations, this proove to me that i loose my time explaining...

I am not surprised anymore of your reactions...

[GatorBrian]

The errors which you have reported should now be fixed. We have also decided to make hostgator's shared, reseller and dedicated pages w3c compliant:

http://www.hostgator.com/shared.shtml
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...Inline&group=0

http://www.hostgator.com/resellers.shtml
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...Inline&group=0

http://www.hostgator.com/dedicated.shtml
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...Inline&group=0

We are working on making all pages compliant with WC3 standards. We appreciate your concerns and feedback.

[Sam]

Good Job Brian

[regentronique]

Thank you Brian, for the silent majority...

Thank you Brent!

[GatorBrian]

http://www.hostgator.com
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...Inline&group=0

In time, all pages will be converted to be w3c compliant. We appreciate all of your concerns and its much appreciated. We hope to make some new changes to the site in the future and we believe that the site should look good in all browsers as well as w3c compliant. I will update this thread when further pages are updated to be w3c compliant. Thanks again guys.

[esl]

Thanks Brian.

[tparker]

Well, to top off all of the debating, I hate to say that most of it was for naught. Neither IE6/7 nor Firefox 2.0.0.7 pass the Acid2 web standards compliance test, so the matter of whether or not things "appear" as they should is in complete relation to the ability of the browser to actually display the "right thing." It's good to see things moving toward W3C though.