I like how wikipedia presents its contents in a usable way on IE5.
This is awesome and most likely a part of their mission to make knowledge as accessible as possible. I have seen old, low-end donated PCs that are rife in elementary education in rural India and I'm sure in other developing countries as well. I am sure that these machines will be able to render wikipedia just fine!
I think it's more likely that they simply haven't felt the need to update their styling much in the past decade or so. And last I checked the home page uses tables for layout, so it would make sense that it works on IE5, since that's what everyone did back then.
And yet you still have a "command prompt" so that you can run your DOS programs as well as "compatibility mode" so that older applications can run on the post-XP systems.
I'd argue that they have the most incentive for the users to move off of ie5. That being said a message that tells users how to update would be much better then a partially rendered mess.
I think it makes sense. They have the most incentive for people to stop using their outdated product (it's hard restoring the image of software like IE).
I think it's doing Wikipedia a disservice to say that it looks good because it's "minimalist" or "static content". There has obviously been a lot of work put into making Wikipedia work well in every browser.
Indeed. They also have Wikipedia Zero, a program to get phone networks in some developing countries to remove mobile internet charges when accessing Wikipedia on phones.
The sad thing is that I was actually needing to use IE5 in February. A Windows 2000 Server machine in India which had been unused for a few years but was being pressed back into service. And Windows Update seemed to need IE6 to be able to install IE6. With a separately-sourced IE6 installer, I did finally get it up to IE6, but I couldn't manage to get it up to IE6 SP1 even then.
IE5 was certainly rather painful to use. Google did not work correctly under it. Microsoft's sites were just about the most painful to browse.
Owing to some malware on the system hijacking some DNS things and some further DNS misconfiguration I couldn't even get Firefox for a while... but I did eventually restore order to the machine and get Firefox 10 ESR installed on it. (The latest supported version to work on Windows 2000.)
Why did anyone bother to press that ancient machine back into service? And why did they not just wipe the hard disk and put up a new copy of the OS on it, especially if there's malware on it?
Believe it or not, in my previous company people were happy with IE4/5/6. I mean really happy with the blue icon in the middle of their screen. They did not want to move to IE7 even because it was simply "enough" for them. Happy married life, complete in all respects. And this was year 2011, not very far back.
Even in China, they say, a significant percentage of population lives happily with IE6 or below. Don't know the latest stats, but I am sure not much has changed there for good. If captain Jack Sparrow needs a broken compass for navigation, then broken compass is exactly what he'd use for navigation. What can anyone do about it?
Look way more decent than I thought, google is apparently the only one really supporting ie5 as their interface seems absolutely unchanged.
Also noticed the irony of microsoft.com being the worst, maybe it shows that the company wants to move forward, maybe it's just lazyness/rationalisation.
Also it's kind of abvious that amazon works well, they don't want to lose potentials customers (maybe same for google)
Doesn't shock me. They're one of the biggest proponents of trying to get people to update their browsers. They created http://www.ie6countdown.com/ after all.
It's also probably near impossible to get their current site working on IE5, and to make a completely separate site just for them (and it's a really really small percentage of worldwide users) would be highly cost prohibitive.
I absolutely love the irony there. Then again, I can't really knock them for not making their website work on IE 5 since they don't support that browser any more.
It looks like the microsoft site is "feature detecting" at some level, and serving up a really basic mobile-oriented site. Think feature phone web browser.
I doubt Google "supports" ie5, their home page is just ultra-stripped down. Before they added that toolbar at the top, it was a text box and three or four links. Not much to mess up.
20 or so years ago, I've got a Hercules card for my dear old 386 machine - Good resolution at the time, but just two colors. There are couple of good games - Star Control II, Trolls, etc. that I've liked and what I did was first to disable the VGA detection, second was to find where the back buffer was in the game, and if there was none (Star Control II), point to my allocated.
Then on the fly convert 320x200x256 colors to monochrome - I mean it was very silly - just pick one of the bits - and with some experiments it worked (no, it's not the way to go in general - but I was able to play).
That was dog slow, but it felt like smoking something, getting high - it didn't matter that the game was unplayable (10fps or less) - it was the fact that it worked!!!
Similarly interesting would be the rendering of these sites with IE5’s competitors, i.e. the major browsers available in 1999. This would have been Netscape 4.5 and some version of AOL, presumably.
For example, even Amazon sites on Firefox 3.6.* browsers in the last couple of months show extremely inconsistent behaviour, e.g. inability to submit new searches after an existing search.
I suspect the only sites that actually work on that list without significant issues are Google and Wikipedia, both optimized to be highly compatible.
Wikipedia stood good there. I'm sure with Netscape's then version, the scene would have been even worse.
But this is only visual aspect, which I believe, is the only part that's easy to measure. It would be interesting to think on how to make it 'easy' to add other dimensions like Functionality, SEO, Accessibility etc. to the list.
Since you're OK with poking fun at other people's software, I'll point out that your left margin vanishes at 990px viewport, and readers need the left-right scrollbar to read below 750px viewports. Not a great reading experience (in Safari 6 on Lion). Cheers!
What % of their revenue does traffic from IE 5 represent? Now, what would the cost in internal resources to maintain browser compatibility on the scale of these sites? (hint: it's a lot) The math is pretty clear.
I was surprised at the size of the screenshots - 750x340. Not 800x600, not even 854x480, but 22:10. Given that layouts tend to break vertically, I was expecting the shots to be at least to the fold.
I remember the bad ol' days of having to support that browser. It wasn't compatible with it's windows counterpart and the 0.5% userbase were highly vocal if anything broke.
The funny thing is that MS supported IE 5.01 on Windows 2000 until 2010, unlike other versions of IE 5.x. If I remember correctly, even MS's own Windows Update v6 released in 2005 had problems displaying in that browser such that they had to put up a warning message.
[+] [-] ultimoo|13 years ago|reply
This is awesome and most likely a part of their mission to make knowledge as accessible as possible. I have seen old, low-end donated PCs that are rife in elementary education in rural India and I'm sure in other developing countries as well. I am sure that these machines will be able to render wikipedia just fine!
[+] [-] ibrahima|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pinko|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smoyer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] speiler|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuhong|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olegbl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evanbriggs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistercow|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrismorgan|13 years ago|reply
IE5 was certainly rather painful to use. Google did not work correctly under it. Microsoft's sites were just about the most painful to browse.
Owing to some malware on the system hijacking some DNS things and some further DNS misconfiguration I couldn't even get Firefox for a while... but I did eventually restore order to the machine and get Firefox 10 ESR installed on it. (The latest supported version to work on Windows 2000.)
[+] [-] yuhong|13 years ago|reply
http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=1
Of course do be warned that you are using unsupported software that had not received security updates since July 2010.
[+] [-] eru|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sharkweek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nwh|13 years ago|reply
http://i.imgur.com/XulRdv4.png
[+] [-] yuhong|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stfu|13 years ago|reply
I would love to see more websites offering a no-frills version for older browsers, mobile browsers, smaller screens, etc.
Once I know that a site provides a specific value to me I really don't care about design and usability anymore.
[+] [-] monsterix|13 years ago|reply
Even in China, they say, a significant percentage of population lives happily with IE6 or below. Don't know the latest stats, but I am sure not much has changed there for good. If captain Jack Sparrow needs a broken compass for navigation, then broken compass is exactly what he'd use for navigation. What can anyone do about it?
[Edits: Jack Sparrow]
[+] [-] majke|13 years ago|reply
For what I can test http://www.alibaba.com/ looks decent in IE6.
One in four browsers in china are IE6. Source: http://www.ie6countdown.com/
(can someone check baidu.com, qq.com, sina.com.cn, csdn.net, alibaba.com in IE5?)
[+] [-] infinita740|13 years ago|reply
Also noticed the irony of microsoft.com being the worst, maybe it shows that the company wants to move forward, maybe it's just lazyness/rationalisation.
Also it's kind of abvious that amazon works well, they don't want to lose potentials customers (maybe same for google)
[+] [-] mynameisvlad|13 years ago|reply
It's also probably near impossible to get their current site working on IE5, and to make a completely separate site just for them (and it's a really really small percentage of worldwide users) would be highly cost prohibitive.
[+] [-] blktiger|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] warfangle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sliverstorm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bicknergseng|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malkia|13 years ago|reply
Then on the fly convert 320x200x256 colors to monochrome - I mean it was very silly - just pick one of the bits - and with some experiments it worked (no, it's not the way to go in general - but I was able to play).
That was dog slow, but it felt like smoking something, getting high - it didn't matter that the game was unplayable (10fps or less) - it was the fact that it worked!!!
[+] [-] Samuel_Michon|13 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth
[+] [-] Moto7451|13 years ago|reply
Doom 3 on a VooDoo 2 SLI setup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUVXAl0dgYY
[+] [-] ijk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alan_cx|13 years ago|reply
Have a look what the Far Cry 3 people have created with Blood Dragon. Dont have to buy it, just have a look on youtube.
[+] [-] mwsherman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dherken|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drucken|13 years ago|reply
For example, even Amazon sites on Firefox 3.6.* browsers in the last couple of months show extremely inconsistent behaviour, e.g. inability to submit new searches after an existing search.
I suspect the only sites that actually work on that list without significant issues are Google and Wikipedia, both optimized to be highly compatible.
[+] [-] usablebytes|13 years ago|reply
But this is only visual aspect, which I believe, is the only part that's easy to measure. It would be interesting to think on how to make it 'easy' to add other dimensions like Functionality, SEO, Accessibility etc. to the list.
[+] [-] dkrich|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] warfangle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protolif|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greghinch|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sesqu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwatzman|13 years ago|reply
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150673019866971....
It had its own set of insane quirks, even worse than Windows IE5. It was the default browser on Mac OS for a long time, until Safari I think.
[+] [-] dolphenstein|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuhong|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeromeparadis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hatu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuhong|13 years ago|reply