"And not really even MMO. It's more, as I understand it, like Journey. That is, you encounter other people in certain circumstances."

So it's like SWTOR then?

I think it's a bit unfair to bash it and call it crap because you haven't spent any time using it. It actually has a very good console, profiler and step-through debugger that's at least as good as Firebug, or the Web Developer plug-in for FF. Personally I develop with Firefox or Chrome when I'm on web projects, but I have taken the time to find my way around IE's debugging tools too.

Not being rude, but if you can't spend £150 or so on a PC with 4GB RAM for development, you're not charging your clients enough! Sounds like that laptop is so old it probably came with a version of Windows with IE5/6 on it anyway!

s/Do want/Don't want/ - doh!

I thought I was pretty much opposing your point. If you have to do more work for a client, charge them for it. It's like any piece of software development; agreeing the deployment platform(s) is a fundamental part of the technical planning stage. If I'm working on a mobile app, I need to know whether it's Android or iOS (or both), for embedded work I need to know the hardware platforms. For web development, the server architecture and browser/device support are pretty much top of the list. I always try to find out this information as early as possible, since IE6 support can sometimes be trivial if the design of the site isn't too outrageous and the client has indicated IE6 might be on the agenda. It's always an extra cost though; and is something I'll always make clear before any development takes place. As you no doubt know, it's far easier to work on templates and structure your CSS and markup if you know you need IE6 support, than it is to try to retrofit it later!

Some clients will be aware of the additional effort required, and make a decision, others require some explanation (I will generally suggest they check any existing stats if it's a rebuild, to see if it's worthwhile). It's hard to overstress how important it is to nail this down early; preferrably in a written contract that's signed off before development begins. It protects both you and the client, as you both know where you stand and there's no "oh, I thought it would work in IE6?!" confusion at the end that leads to a lot of wasted time, or aggravation. Usually at the developer's cost.

I've been quoting separately for IE6 for at least 5 years, and also IE7 for the last few. Of course, the additional cost is growing higher. Browsers have improved, while IE6 has not, and so the gap has in some ways widened. I'm finding that far less projects these days require IE6 support (of course, I do still check the sites are functional, but any styling issues are irrelevant.)

Do want to sound like I'm preaching, just been through it for so many years that this stuff is sort of automatic now!

Please read what I wrote again. I don't think you understood it properly.

As I mentioned above. MS make VM images available to test content in various versions of IE for free. These can be used on OSX or Linux (and probably any other platform that supports the VMI format they use). Safari isn't available for Linux either, in case you forgot.

Very true - in fact IE4 was actually way more stable than NS4, and IE5 was a revelation when it came out. It wasn't that MS just used underhand practices (though they certainly did) but their browsers just had better engines. NS5 was terrible. they attempted to correct the biggest problem with NS4 which was that resizing it with JS and dynamic content would either crash the browser completely, or kill the JS engine and screw up the layout (unless you used the proprietary tag). IE4 at the time had no problem with reflow, although it was a bit slower. NS5 though was ridiculously slow, incompatible with NS4, and had so many bugs that it was ludicrous to recommend anyone use it. Netscape basically just let it stagnate.

"If you don't hate IE, then you haven't been building websites."

First website I built was around 20 years ago. Last website I built completed a couple of weeks ago.

I've been through pretty much every version of IE, Netscape, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, (and Mozaic). If you're not charging clients extra now for IE6/7 support, then you really need to look at your business practices. I don't "hate" any platform; I just charge clients if they need a platform supported. Of course, you're free to go on some religious or idealogical crusade in your spare time if you like, but getting emotional about a browser doesn't make much sense.

It's funny to me to hear people claiming IE6 is incapable of rending content etc, when we were making arcade style games, windowing systems, AJAX style requests (piggybacking data in cookies from image src requests) back with IE4 and NS4.

tl;dr Charge clients for the extra work, or get new clients. Don't work for free and then moan about it.

You obviously haven't tried very hard. There are freely available VM images to test with various versions of IE : http://www.rdeeson.com/weblog/126/how-to-run-internet-explorer-7-8-and-9-in-linux-with-or-without-wine.html . Obviously you can use them with OSX or Linux.

Probably also worth mentioning that the OSX version of Safari doesn't render exactly the same as it does on Windows. It's also not any more available for Linux than IE is. Maybe that's "untestable" too, eh?

Must admit, although I primarily use Firefox or Chome; I have no problems at all with IE. I don't understand why people would "cheer for its demise". IE9 is a good browser, and I'm all for competition. Less competition in any space is generally bad for users, if things swing too far toward one engine we'll be in the same position we were when IE6 was the "standard" and people ended up only bothering to test on that browser. That causes stagnation.

Yeah, basically the rain sensor (BMW) overrides the intermittent timer, so although the controls are there for it, they don't actually do anything if the sensor hasn't enabled the wipers. Afterwards I found out that if the sensor's fuse is removed, then the intermittent hardware works again. Wish I'd known!

Not only that, but some parts are pretty much guaranteed to fail after X years, and be very expensive to replace. Example on my car the passenger side central locking was working only sporadically. Wasn't the solenoid; turned out to be the controller module, so cost over £500 to replace to fix the problem. Also, rain sensor on the windscreen - notorious for failing at around 4-5 years, requires a complete new windscreen + sensor module as they're bonded together. You might wonder why bother, but if that is not working, you either have to have the wipers full-on, or off; there's no intermittent setting, which quickly becomes very annoying.

Yup, if you're arguing that "Steam DRM is easy to hack, so Steam are the good guys" - then why bother even paying anything? You're already on the path, so you might as well just torrent the game for free.

Agreed. My actual point was that Steam's (and Apple's) restrictions are the same as Sony and MS are proposing. The price is actually irrelevant. I don't usually read AC posts (as they're often posters trying to reinforce their own arguments) so have no idea what they said, but the other stuff posted would be irrelevant, even if it weren't illogical. Attacking me for posting actual prices from the Steam store with some ridiculous argument that the prices would go down some day, so it's impossible that they sell for that. Or "I buy games for $10, so all games are $10". Just... wow...

But hey, this is Slashdot - been here enough years to know how it works by now :)