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Oh come on, it's not like the major modern browsers don't adhere closely enough to spec, especially when coupled with freely available libraries like jQuery/jQueryUI that you couldn't easily develop the front end to be compatible with them all.

As a web developer, I have occasionally run into things where something unexpectedly changed between browser revisions. Usually this was a case of the old version not following spec, and making code to match the browser behavior instead of spec (basically treating the symptoms instead of the cause), and not wrapping that code in some sort of block to specifically target the old browser version. 

I'm not saying I could write the front-end for EBS and have it compatible with all major browsers (although I would be sure it worked in Chrome at least!), but I will say that it is very... puzzling, to say the least. Especially given the information that simply changing your UA string (at least for Firefox) works. If there really is no problem using Firefox 4 or 5 (as long you masquerade as FF 3), then why is it actively being disallowed? 

Carl Bussema III
Information Technologist
Michigan State University Outreach & Engagement
Phone: (517) 353-8977 • Fax: (517) 432-9541 
[log in to unmask]



On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Vivek Joshi <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Ah modern browsers following web standards. That would be good.

-----Original Message-----
From: David McFarlane [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2011 4:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] updated browser support for EBS?

OK, but that begs the question of, why should the user have to go through
such contortions in the first place?  Shouldn't any web system be designed
to follow well-established standards in the first place, so that it works
with modern browsers?  If a system works with older browsers, and newer
browsers still run the old code, then shouldn't a system just work with
newer browsers without any fuss?  And if so, shouldn't that system *not*
include code to specifically and arbitrarily exclude newer browsers?

Like others, I find this simply unacceptable.  I would be ashamed to release
such a system myself.

-- dkm


At 6/23/2011 03:43 PM Thursday, Rytlewski, Jamie wrote:
>It's not that they can't use EBS if they upgrade, they just have to use
>compatibility mode (withIE). It's really not that difficult to use
>compatibility mode. Yes, you have to show your users how to do it, but
>I've had no problem in my office.
>
>On Jun 24, 2011, at 4:40 AM, Kim Geiger wrote:
>
> >>>> On 6/23/2011 at 3:29 PM, Troy Murray <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> >> I agree with you about the lack of support for newer browsers, the
> >> Angel/Blackboard system has the same limitation.
> >
> > I was just grumbling about this this morning.  Yes, it's true
> that I don't understand the nature of the problem behind the scenes,
> but if I encountered it at Amazon or elsewhere, they'd lose a sale
> rather than get my sympathy.
> >
> > It's kind of, well, unacceptable, actually, and it's turning into
> a real support hassle for me as my users, despite my admonitions,
> click on the upgrade button and then can't use EBS.
> >
> > --
> > Kim Geiger
> > Information Technologist
> > Broadcasting Services
> > Michigan State University
> > 517-432-3120 x 429