2008-11-04

Save the Developer, Save the World Wide Web

The developers are not saved! Tonight i thought i'd look into adding some more style to my blog, check up some of the code and make sure i still have an "If you're using IE 6, upgrade now to save there developers". A while back, this campaign was launched, an organisation called Save The Developers. They hosted a small javascript file on their server which anyone could link to their site to pop up a warning to users with IE 6. Fantastic idea. As someone who has done some commercial web development, i know the pain and suffering web developers go through to get a site working in Firefox, Opera and IE 6 & 7. I am a firm believer of standards and maintaining a set of global rules for formats and protocols. ISO and W3C don't exist for nothing, and if anyone Microsoft have a reputation for ignoring them. So on my blog had a link to their site, so i thought i'd check it out, maybe they have updates since i was last there, 8 months ago. I was redirected to Microsoft's IE 7 Download Page. Try it here.

I could speculate that they just stopped paying for their hosting and just shoved in a URL redirect, or the conspiracy theorist in me could say that Microsoft shut the down, but i don't know. There is no trace of them. Google searching seems to reveal nothing. Just gone. Obviously something happened, but i'd like to know what. If anyone knows, or if any of the people involved in the campaign are still out there, please let the internet community know what happened.

A question that i have is, why does it link to Microsoft's IE 7 page and not a Firefox or Opera or <insert other browser that was around when they vanished>? If the campaign was about "Saving the Developers", then why IE 7? It's not as bad as IE 6, granted, but it's far from Konqueror, Firefox, Chrome or my favourite, Opera. I'm also going to put in some effort to publicize the fact that the campaign is gone, and i will make a plan to host a javascript file on my site that behaves in a similar way to the one that they had.

Maybe concerned people should start a "Find the Developers" campaign, if for no other reason than to ask... Why IE 7?!?

PS: Found a similar project, and this time i'm going to make sure that i host the code too, just in case they vanish. Just insert one of the following snippets of code in between your <head></head> tag in the required HTML page

For the code that warns IE 6 users but still lets them browse:

<!--[if lte IE 6]> <script src="http://sites.google.com/site/dgoemans/no-more-ie/StopIE6_Tolerant.jscript" type="text/javascript"></script> <![endif]-->

For the code that completely prevents IE 6 users from viewing your site:

<!--[if lte IE 6]> <script src="http://sites.google.com/site/dgoemans/no-more-ie/StopIE6_NoMercy.jscript" type="text/javascript"></script> <![endif]-->
I'm using the no mercy script, since i'm sick of being turned away by sites because they don't like Opera.

1 comment:

  1. I would like to know this as well.

    I used this on many websites.

    An update would be great if you figure it out!

    Blaine Ehrhart

    ReplyDelete