Squiz Cards

[iandevlin]

Squiz Cards

See David Airey's blog post for an example.

[StiligeCecilie]

Cool :)
I entered the giveaway ;)

[Scriptage]

Gay. How can anyone think that this shit is professional?

Your version of Internet Explorer is
out of date and we cannot display
this website correctly.

Well how about you learn to code you ignorant arsehole? Do you really think I want to use Internet Explorer 6? Even if I did what's it got to do with you which browser I use? How would you like it if I displayed a message over Coronation Street saying "**** you, use HD"?. No.

On a lighter note, those look pretty cool. Nice find Mr. Devlin.

[iandevlin]

Fair point, I hadn't come across that. I guess they're in the camp of "sod you all, foul evil users of Internet Explorer 6".

[StiligeCecilie]

Gay. How can anyone think that this shit is professional?

Yeah, it says the same here, even though I'm not using IE. I'm using Chrome...

[blueocto]

Oh I'm using Chrome, and I didn't get that message? Must be a glitch in the matrix...

Nice find ian!

[Scriptage]

I'm sick of web developers trying to change the world. There really needs to be some sort of formal qualification for web developers (like being CORGI registered). I didn't churn this carp out when I was a web developer 5 years ago! This article pretty much says it all about IE 6 usage.

[Mikey D]

Scriptage! After all the work we've put into Squiz Cards I was heart broken to read your comment :( I just thought I'd reply with our reason for not supporting IE6 right away.

There are some things that we rely on that you just can't do in IE6. One example - we need PNG alpha support in the Squiz Card editor. So to support IE6 we need to make a slightly degraded version of the site. This takes time and would have meant delaying the release of Squiz Cards for at least a few months.

Squiz Cards are just so damn useful for business promotion, self promotion & networking! So we thought delaying the launch of Squiz Cards would have been a greater disservice to the community than launching without support for IE6. :)

So that's our defense. We are continually working to improve the Squiz Cards site, so hopefully we'll pick up IE6 support soon. There are just a few things ahead of IE6 support in the priority list like double sided printing.

Michael

[Scriptage]

There are some things that we rely on that you just can't do in IE6. One example - we need PNG alpha support in the Squiz Card editor. So to support IE6 we need to make a slightly degraded version of the site. This takes time and would have meant delaying the release of Squiz Cards for at least a few months.

That's fine if you display a notice when someone tries to use the Squiz Card Editor but as it stands nobody using IE6 can see any of your website. That means I can't see what Squiz Cards are, how much they cost etc. If they are as useful for business promotion as you say they are then people who could not use the Squiz Card Editor would get in touch by e-mail and send you their design. As it stands you are losing potential business.
A lot of big companies still run Windows 2000 (which comes with IE6 as default) and it doesn't make sense financially to upgrade. As of last month the average IE6 usage statistics were around 13.9%; that's a lot of people that are effectively being shunned. I would see these big companies as a key demographic which is why I'm bemused at your approach.
My advice would be to remove the IE6 message until people try to access a part of your site that really cannot be supported in IE6 right away.

Kind Regards

Carl

[Mikey D]

We can't really accept credit cards by email because it would be insecure and enabling/disabling parts of the site (like the payment page) for IE6 would still have caused a shift of the release date when you take into account development time + testing time + maintenance of the code time.

But you're absolutely right 13.9% is a lot to shun and we plan to fix that but imagine if we delayed the release, we'd be shunning 100%.

I don't think we can remove the IE6 message for now but what do you think about making the IE6 message a bit friendlier with some pictures/prices/other info about how cool Squiz Cards are? Perhaps also a method to get in touch with us so people can tell us what ignorant arseholes we are for not supporting IE6? :P

Michael