Facebook to drop IE6 support on IE9 beta day, September 15

I’ve been quiet for  while, and wanted to start up again with some great news.  Facebook is going to stop IE6 support for chat on the IE9 beta day.

Projects always ask about IE6 support, whether they need it, etc.  Surprisingly IE7 and IE8 support is also an issue, since they don’t support many of the cool toys supported by actual modern browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox).

I hope IE9 quickly replaces at least the IE7 and IE8 communities.  IE 6 seems here to stay, at least for that last 6-8%.

Some other information from that article:

• Microsoft will support IE6 until April 2014
• Google has removes IE6 support in Google Docs, Google Sites, Gmail, Google Calendar and YouTube!
• Microsoft Office Web Apps doesn’t even support IE6 (how could you when trying to do anything cool)

The article quotes numbers as high as 17% for IE6 usage share, but I haven’t seen those numbers in a long time.  My website enjoys an IE6 user base of 0.5% (in the last month, whereas IE, all versions, was around 19%).  Other larger websites I manage see around 7.7% IE6 usage (with IE, all versions, being an amazing 55% of overall traffic).

Tags: browser support, Chrome, Facebook, Google, Ie 6, IE 7, IE 8, ie6, IE7, IE8, Internet Explorer, internet explorer 6, Microsoft

Help: IE7 won’t load my JSON but IE8 will – Using a JSON Validator

I just ran into this issue, and found surprisingly little documentation.  My JSON request wasn’t returning.  I was using the jQuery “getJSON” method to send the request out.  Nothing was coming back.

› Continue reading

Tags: Chrome, Firefox, getJSON, IE7, IE8, Internet Explorer, jQuery, JSON, JSON Validator, JSONLint, Safari

IE6 and IE7 limit CSS links to 30

Help!  Working in Drupal and having trouble getting stylesheets to work?  Did they break all of a sudden in Internet Explorer only?

I can’t see my stylesheets anymore in IE6 or IE7!

Internet Explorer limits the number of stylesheets included with a LINK tag

That’s right.  If you include an additional CSS file beyond 30, it will break other CSS files.

This problem is only in IE6 and IE7.  Officially I’m sure Microsoft says the fix is to upgrade to IE8.

What code causes the problem? Perfectly valid code below:

[sourcecode language='html'][/sourcecode]

Just repeat that 31 times, and you will see an error.

The Solution

While <link> tags may have issues beyond 30 stylesheets being included, you can cheat with using @import.

For example, include CSS using the following instead:

[sourcecode language='html']

[/sourcecode]

If you’re working in Drupal, there’s a module that implements this fix for you, IE Unlimited CSS Loader.

Tags: CSS, Drupal, fix, HTML, ie6, IE7, Import, Internet Explorer, Link, Microsoft